Tertiäre internationale Bildungsstatistik qualitativ interpretiert

Tertiäre Bildung ist ein sehr heterogener Bildungsbereich. Häufig wird er verkürzt mit Hochschulbildung gleichgesetzt. Gleichzeitig werden die internationalen Bildungsdaten auf der Basis der sog. ISCED-Klassifikation erhoben, in der dem tertiären Bereich auch außerhochschulische Bildungsgänge zugeordnet werden. Dadurch kann Raum für Fehlinterpretationen entstehen. Um diesen Raum zu schließen, werden in diesem Beitrag Formulierungen aus einer quantitativen Analyse von Eurostat durch qualitative Daten zu den Bildungsprogrammen des tertiären Bildungsbereichs beispielhaft ergänzt

Knowing and doing vocational education and training reform: evidence, learning and the policy process

Much of VET policy internationally draws on a toolkit that has been seriously questioned for its logic, international relevance and effectiveness by considerable amounts of academic research. Reflecting primarily on our experiences of leading a complex, multi-country policy study, we develop an account that seeks to explore ways in which the apparent incommensurability between academic and policy knowledge can be addressed. This leads on to a broader discussion of key issues of contestation in the debates about knowledge for policy as they relate to international education and development more generally. We consider three key turns in the discourse of international education policy and research: to "governing by numbers", "what works" and policy learning, and ask what happens when these discursive trends travel to Southern and VET contexts. We suggest that this analysis implies that policymakers need both to be more modest and reflexive in their expectations of what knowledge can be mobilised for policy purposes and more serious in their commitment to supporting the generation of the types of knowledge that they claim to value. For international and comparative educators, we stress the importance of being clearer in seeking to shape research agendas; more rigorous in our approaches to research; and better in our external communication of our findings. Given the particular focus of this special issue on VET, we end by reiterating the particular challenge of reawakening research on VET-for-development from twenty years of slumbers

Are graduates preferred to those completing initial vocational education and training? Case studies on company recruitement strategies in Germany, England and Switzerland

The German and Swiss economies value skilled work highly and initial vocational education and training (IVET) has been the predominant traditional pathway into such work. However, concerns about a more ‘knowledge-based society’ and the ‘academic shift in the labour market’ are starting to undermine the status associated with those who complete IVET pathways and these former trainees also face competition from graduates from the relatively new Bachelor programmes in Switzerland and Germany. An international project investigated whether these developments pose a threat to developed IVET systems and whether companies are changing their recruitment strategies and how they rate the status of IVET. The findings from Germany and Switzerland were compared with the situation in England, the home of two-phase HE structures along with a very different tradition of vocational training. The findings from individual case studies in England, Germany and Switzerland are presented here, with the focus on the expectations of companies towards applicants with experience of IVET or Bachelor’s degrees