Higher level vocational education: the route to high skills and productivity as well as greater equity? An international comparative analysis

This international comparative analysis of higher level vocational education examines developments across five countries: England, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the USA. The authors consider how current developments address two key policy concerns: an emphasis on high skills as a means of achieving economic competitiveness and raising productivity; and the promise of increasing access for students hitherto excluded from higher education. We address these questions in relation to specific country contexts, in order to highlight similarities and differences in developments within the European arena and in a wider global context. We locate our analyses in an understanding of the different political and socio-economic conditions within different countries, which render particular reforms and innovations both possible and realizable in one context, but almost unthinkable in another. We argue for the need to recognize and embrace diversity in provision, while using comparison across countries as a means of challenging taken-for-granted assumptions of how things are and what is possible within individual country contexts. Such comparative analysis is a prerequisite for answering questions of policy transfer and learning from others.