One of the important roles of HE institutions is to train graduates who will smoothly enter the labour market. The literature review demonstrates that one effective method to facilitate this transition is to ensure students acquire professional experience. The aim was to establish the scale and characteristics of employers' demand for work…

Apprenticeships for adults are one of the policy solutions to the need for supporting adults willing to train, while broadening the skills base of the working population across Europe. According to Cedefop estimates, there are around 128 million adults with potential for upskilling or reskilling in the European Union (EU). EU Member States have…

This country note presents the results of an analysis of Austria undertaken within the Labour Market Relevance and Outcomes of Higher Education Partnership Initiative project. The project was implemented by the OECD with the support of the European Commission with the aim of helping policy makers and higher education institutions enhance the…

One response to challenges of national vocational training systems has been a move towards greater flexibility within vocational training systems. This article focuses on an investigation of modularisation as a tool for achieving this flexibility. Many European countries have introduced modular forms into their vocational training system. We…

Concise, clear and comprehensive snapshots of vocational education and training systems in EU, Iceland and Norway: this is what the Cedefop Spotlight on VET series offers. Building on individual country Spotlights, this publication provides an overview of VET systems with their distinctive qualities, such as main accession and progression routes…

Previous Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Union (EU) work has shown that even native-born children with immigrant parents face persistent disadvantage in the education system, the school-to-work transition and the labour market. To which degree are these linked with their immigration background, i.e. with…

Vocational education and training (VET) is a major policy topic for countries all over the world, who are eager to learn from the best examples where participation in VET is high and youth unemployment is low. Policymakers want to know how strong VET systems manage challenges like rapid technological change, matching labor market demand for…

"The Shifting Global World of Youth and Education" explores how increasing migration and population changes are having an unprecedented impact on global education. Given that the number of children of migrant background is growing internationally, there is a need for increasing awareness of the educational attainment and cultural…

Understanding today's Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems requires a comprehension of the rise and development, i.e. of the foundations of topical VET. This book provides a comparative view of its development in Europe. The contributions of renowned authors give insight into conceptual questions, cases, and challenges in this field.

The central questions addressed in this paper are the following: (1) In the context of the (European Union) EU's goal of severing the link between social class background and higher education participation, what progress has been made in widening access over the past two decades? (2) Has the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) helped EU countries to…

A strong VET system is increasingly seen as essential to overcoming the current economic crisis in Europe. VET is seen as a powerful tool to assist in balancing labour market inefficiencies, increasing youth employment possibilities, and reducing skills mismatch. Its inherent flexibility and closeness to the labour market place VET in a good…

In his article "Globalisation, the Learning Society, and Comparative Education", Peter Jarvis recommends lifelong learning in the period of globalisation as a topic ripe for scholarly research. In particular, he argues for the examination of the extent of lifelong learning around the world and its relation to different levels of…

Changing expectations of major groups affected by higher education (employers, consumers of research, young people, nontraditional student groups) are compared with broader political interpretations of community needs (equality, investment, other functions) in the context of experiences of Austria, Sweden, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United…

This article compares Austrian higher education and employment issues to those in other nations and concludes that Austria's situation is idiosyncratic. It specifically addresses university role and structure, open access, unregulated student-institution matching, individualized study structure, low proportion of graduates in the labor force,…

Educational leave policies--paid time-off from work for educational purposes--in France, Germany, Italy, and Sweden are compared and extensively analyzed, and also, to a lesser degree, the policies in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom. These analyses, intended to be relevant to the American scene in relation to…