Change despite reform backlog - vocational education and training policy since 1970
Busemeyer, Marius R.: Wandel trotz Reformstau - Die Politik der beruflichen Bildung seit 1970 [Change despite reform backlog: vocational education and training policy since 1970], Frankfurt a.M., New York: Campus.
Although it is often stated that a reform backlog exists within German VET policy, the German system of vocational education and training is undergoing a deep-reaching phase of upheaval. The present work shows how access to training, the financing of training and the participation of companies in training have changed since the 1970's. These transformation processes, however, tend to take place incrementally and in small steps. This means that major changes are only discernable if a long-term perspective is adopted.
The main section of the book addresses the issue of how these incremental transformations are perceived by policy stakeholders and thus also of how they are driven forwards. Particular consideration is accorded to the role of the social partners in vocational education and training policy. This is another area in which a clear pattern is apparent. Although the reform positions of the relevant policy stakeholders have undergone very little change from year to year, the retrospective perspective aligned towards long-term developments reveals significant shifts. In the 1970's, for example, the trade unions strongly supported the expansion of full-time schooling elements within vocational education and training. Now, however, they have become ardent proponents and defenders of the primacy of company-based training. By the same token, the employers of the 1970's adopted a conservative attitude and fought against the reforms instigated by the SPD-FDP government, whereas today they have joined the Federal Government in lending their approval to a more extensive transformation of the system in the wake of the debate surrounding the modularisation, flexibilisation and Europeanisation of VET. The Federal Government itself adopts various positions depending on its party-political hue, but always remains committed to endeavouring to resolve the problem of the chronic shortage of training places.
The final section of the book debates the extent to which the changes observed in vocational education and training display a systematic correlation with known changes within the field of industrial relations. The decreasing degrees of coverage of overall collective wage agreements and the emergence of new conflicts between and within the employers' and trade unions' camps also exert effects on vocational education and training policy. Particularly in the case of the employers, conflicts between the exporting sections of trade and industry on one side and the craft trades and chambers on the other which have emerged from the debate on modularisation are becoming ever more obvious.
The book approaches its object of investigation from a comparative political economy and comparative political science perspective. Notwithstanding this, extensive treatments of specific specialist debates are avoided and the work is mainly directed at a general expert public audience. Beyond its discussion of the role of the social partners, this enables the book to provide comprehensive documentation of policy debates in vocational education and training since the 1970's whilst also making it an appropriate reference work for continuing studies.
