Search results

Work-integrated learning (WIL) is a strategy that enhances student learning and employability by engaging students in real-world settings, applications and practices. Through WIL, tertiary education institutions forge partnerships with industry to provide students with access to activities that will contribute to their career-readiness and personal growth. The purpose of the paper is to explore academics perceptions of WIL from non-vocational disciplines, where WIL opportunities are less prevalent.

The study employed a qualitative, case-study methodology to unpack academics' reflections on the question “What does WIL mean to you?” Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 33 subject coordinators across a number of non-vocational degrees at one university in Australia. Open coding and thematic analysis was used to explore qualitative data and identify common themes.

Data suggest that academics largely have placement-based understandings of WIL that cause tensions for embedding WIL meaningfully in their courses. Tensions surface when WIL is perceived as a pedagogy that contributes to the neoliberal agenda that sits in conflict with theoretical approaches and that restrict notions of career.

Although WIL is not relevant in all subjects, these understandings are a useful starting point to introduce WIL meaningfully, in various ways and where appropriate, in order to provide students opportunities for learning and employability development. The paper has implications for faculty, professional learning and institutional strategies concerning WIL for all students.

In France, the vocationalization of higher education has resulted in an increase in the number of graduates and created new opportunities. The access of these vocational bachelor graduates to the labour market raises the issue of their professional prospects amid changing economic and social circumstances. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To provide insights into these issues, the employment situation of bachelor graduates during the first years of active working life will be compared with other tertiary graduates entering the labour market in the same years, using econometric models that estimate the effects of vocational courses “all other things being equal”, incorporating a range of individual characteristics.

Overall, vocational bachelor graduates experienced fewer difficulties in seeking to enter the labour market during difficult economic circumstances. They did not achieve upward social mobility with a lower probability of obtaining a managerial/professional occupation three years after graduation. These results confirm that diplomas continue to play a central and hierarchized role in France.

The originality of this paper is to highlight the labour market transition of vocational bachelor graduates during a period of economic crisis, inquiring on the social benefit of this new diploma in France: what were the impacts of the changing economic conditions and influx of vocational bachelor graduates on their labour market transition and their chances of upward social mobility?

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how liberal higher education can strengthen vocational higher education.

The paper uses Shay's (2013) framework of curriculum differentiation to articulate how the strengths and shortcomings of liberal education differ from those of vocational education and to allow the differences highlighted to inform a resolution to each other's shortcomings.

There is nothing new in the findings that liberal education differs from vocational education and that both have shortcomings. What the paper presents is a viewpoint that the differences are not confirmation that these two approaches to education are in opposition but rather that they complement each other. The strength of one is the weakness of the other.

The perspective taken in this paper is developed using the language of semantic density (SD) and semantic gravity (SG). Using Shay's semantic field of recontextualized knowledge, this paper suggests that liberal and vocational education inhabit two sides of contexts and concepts continua. The paper further proposes that both are alike in a meaningful way because both have unsuccessfully managed the role of context in their curricula.

Youth unemployment is one of the major problems that the economic systems face. Given this issue, the purpose of this paper is to assess whether school-to-work transition is easier for individuals with secondary vocational education compared to general secondary education. The authors want to explore which vocational systems across Europe produce better effects.

The authors use data from a module on “Entry of young people into the labour market” from the 2009 and 2014 European Labour Survey and they estimate multinomial probit models, allowing for violation of the irrelevance of the alternative assumption.

The authors find that in countries with the dual vocational system, vocational education improves employability both in the short and medium run, whereas in countries with a school-based vocational system, results are mixed and, only in some cases, the effect of vocational studies is significantly positive.

Sample size for short-run analysis is a bit small in a few countries (Austria and Germany). Moreover, even if the authors have reason to believe that the methods adopted are mitigating the omitted heterogeneity issues and robustness checks are run on these aspects, these issues cannot be fully excluded.

The authors provide policy implications, showing that dual vocational systems can improve school-to-work transitions and that vocational structure is particularly effective in this case.

The authors provide information on which education model may offer better chance in terms of labour outcomes.

Given the relevance of youth unemployment, the authors provide valuable information on how to mitigate this problem. The use of cross-country comparisons offers great insights on which vocational systems appear to be well-suited to enhance employability.

This introductory chapter develops the overall research focus and the aim of the present special issue ‘Gender segregation in vocational education’. Against the backdrop of strong horizontal gender segregation in vocational education and training (VET), we ask how institutional arrangements affect gendered (self-)selection into VET, and to what extent the patterns of the latter vary by context and over time. In order to expand our knowledge about the impact of educational offers and policies on gendered educational pathways and gender segregation in the labour market, we have gathered comparative quantitative studies that analyse the relationship between national variations in the organization of VET and cross-national differences in educational and occupational gender segregation from an institutional perspective. Following a review of the core literature within the field of gender segregation in VET, this introduction presents a discussion of education system classifications and institutional level mechanisms based on the contributions made in this volume. We then discuss gendered educational choices at the individual level, with particular emphasis on variation across the life course. Finally, we conclude our introductory chapter by commenting on the main contributions of the volume as a whole, as well as addressing suggestions for further research.

Detailed education, employment and training histories have been constructed for a cohort of 440 male respondents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The employment histories show that most respondents without college degrees have experienced at least one occupational break since entering the labour force. The training histories show that most of those in employment in 1992 have had no formal training for their current occupations. An assessment of whether those who received training before or on entering the labour force have subsequently had more stable employment histories than those who have not shows that this is true of college‐level vocational education but not of high school vocational education or training received in vocational/technical institutes. These findings suggest that the comprehensive provision of entry‐level training for those not college‐bound, as advocated by those promoting vocational education in high schools, cannot be justified in terms of labour market outcomes.

This article explores (1) student perceptions and understanding of Events Management; (2) how Events Management is positioned by different UK Higher Education providers through their online marketing; and (3) the perceived value of an Events Management degree among students.

A mixed-methods approach, combining an online student questionnaire (n = 524), semi-structured interviews with current first year Events Management students (n = 24) at two UK universities, and website analysis of all Events Management degrees offered in the UK.

Students demonstrate a lack of knowledge about what Events Management is, what a career in Events Management might entail and the perceived value of an Events Management degree. This suggests the need to reposition Events Management degrees within a broader applied management base. Current course marketing presents a narrow view of Events Management degrees and the narrow vocationally-laden narrative undersells and “over-vocationalises” the subject.

Understanding student perceptions better will help universities market Events Management degrees more effectively and will benefit broader efforts to illustrate the value and credibility of it as a degree subject choice and career. More balanced presentation between the practical and non-practical aspects of the courses in university marketing may help reposition Events Management alongside more readily understood vocational subjects.

This is the first study to examine student perceptions over the credibility of Events Management degrees. It also addresses Park and Park's (2017) observation that reviews of Events Management education and curricula are conspicuously absent from Hospitality and Tourism journals.

Foundation degrees, the new proposal for sub‐degree vocational education in the UK, are characterised by innovation both in their design (curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment) and in the marketplace for which they are designed. This article argues that the development and delivery of foundation degrees carry a high level of risk, and encourages reflection on the nature and impact of those risks.

The article discusses the sources of the risks associated with the development of foundation degrees, as a platform for the development of strategies for the management of risk, and positive quality management. The discussion is developed under the following headings: working in partnership, validation processes, curriculum and learning issues, marketplace and admission issues, staffing and organisational issues, and the student experience.

There are a number of sources of support and advice to assist in mitigation of the risks, but ultimately the responsibility for the management of the risks rests with employers, educational institutions, their staff and students.

The article surfaces a range of issues relating to risks and their management in the context of foundation degrees. It should inform curriculum development, and the development of quality management systems for the management of foundation degrees.

This study seeks to ascertain whether there are regional gender differences in vocational education in Bulgaria at the upper secondary level and to shed more light on the main factors for the (non-)emergence of these differences. The research has drawn on data from the National Statistical Institute and the Centre for Information in Education in Bulgaria as well as a nationally representative school-leavers survey (2014); it has applied descriptive statistics and multilevel modelling for the data analysis. Overall, the present study demonstrates that the regional dimension is indispensable for understanding the development of vocational education and gender differentiation in education. The analysis provides evidence that the mechanism by which the education system contributes to regional gender segregation in vocational education is its opportunity structures at the regional level, which are related to vocational education offers. In addition, we found a positive association between industrial development and the share of women in engineering at the regional level.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence for individual educational investment decisions and to investigate the relative importance of two factors, the type of education (vocational vs academic) and subject area (e.g. commercial or health), in determining variance in earnings.

Using a sample of 1,200 individuals based on the 2011 Swiss Adult Education Survey, Mincer-type earnings equations are estimated. The variance in earnings is decomposed with respect to the two factors mentioned above, which allows to quantify the relative contributions of type of education and subject area to variance in earnings.

The results of the variance decomposition show that subject area explains nearly twice the variance in earnings compared with that explained by type of education.

As results show that earnings variance – and thereby risk – relate more to subject area than to type of education, this study suggests that for individuals caring about the risk of their educational decision the selection of a specific subject area is more relevant than the choice between vocational and academic tracks; in addition, educational policies as part of HRM policies should devote as much attention to the choice of subject areas as to vocational or academic education. This is especially important for companies or countries planning to introduce or to extend vocational education as part of their human resources strategies.

This study is the first to show whether earnings vary more by type of education or by subject area.