Comparative International Approaches · are athw ˜ect 1 DRAFT 3 Comparative International...

The Career Pathways Effect

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3Comparative International Approaches

William C. Symonds

All across the United States, there is widespread agreement that we have lost our global leadership in preparing young people to lead successful lives as adults. No wonder. The evidence of

our comparative decline is as incontrovertible as it is alarming. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan warned recently, “Our nation faces urgent educational problems. . . . In international comparisons, our performance is mediocre at best. It’s telling that the only thing our students lead the world in is self-esteem. The hard truth is that many nations are out-performing and out-educating us.”1

This is a relatively recent development. As we observed in our 2011 report—Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century—for over a century, the United States led the world in education. By the end of the Civil War, “the U.S. already had the most educated youth in the world,” as Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz documented in their seminal book, The Race Between Education and Technology. In the 19th century, U.S. lead-ership stemmed from our commitment to universal grammar school education. As the economy and technology evolved, we led the world in developing more advanced forms of education that would prepare

1 From remarks delivered by Education Secretary Arne Duncan at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on Feb. 7, 2012 (http://www.ed.gov/blog/2012/02/in-boston-arne-says-we-must-invest-in-education/; accessed March 30, 2012).

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Chapter 3: Comparative International Approaches

youth for the jobs that were emerging. In the early decades of the 20th century, “the high school movement” spread like wildfire across the nation. By the beginning of World War II, the typical 18-year-old had a high school diploma, compared to just 9 percent who had achieved this milestone in 1910. After the war ended in 1945, there was an enor-mous expansion of higher education, and young Americans led the world in attaining college degrees.2

This surge in educational attainment was a major contributor to the explosive growth in American economic and political power that became known as the American Century. In 2012, we live in a global, information-driven economy in which education has never been more important to economic success. And yet over the last genera-tion, we have squandered our leadership in education. After years as the leader, we no longer rank among the top ten nations in the percentage of our youth who graduate from high school on time. But we are a leader in producing high school dropouts—some one million students drop out of high school every year. “In a globally-competi-tive, knowledge-based economy, it is a stain upon our nation that one in four American students fails to finish high school on time or drops out,” says Duncan. “And in a single generation, the U.S. has gone from having the highest college attainment rate in the world among young adults to being 16th,” he adds. 3

Trends in American academic achievement are equally alarming. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)—which is administered to 15-year-olds across member nations every three years—is considered the gold standard for comparative purposes. As we noted in the Pathways report, “What differentiates PISA from other such assessments is that it is designed to see how well students can apply what they have learned in school to novel problems and situations, not simply how well they have mastered the curriculum they have been taught. In this sense PISA is designed to measure the kind of thinking and problem-solving skills that

2 William C. Symonds, Robert B. Schwartz, and Ronald Ferguson (February 2011), Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Ameri-cans for the 21st Century (report issued by the Pathways to Prosperity Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education), p. 1.3 Duncan, Feb. 7, 2012.


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employers tell us are most valuable on the job.” Yet in the past four rounds of PISA, the performance of U.S. youth has been uniformly mediocre. In 2009, for instance, American students ranked just 17th in science and 25th in math achievement.4

The decline in American educational leadership has been coupled with another worrisome development: the growing difficulty teens and young adults are having in successfully transitioning to the labor market. As economists Paul Harrington and Neeta Fogg docu-mented in a recent article, unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds has doubled over the past decade. “The nation’s teen unemployment rate rose from 13 percent in 2000 to 26 percent in 2010,” they write. “Among young adults between the ages of 20 and 24, the unemploy-ment rate increased from 7 percent in 2000 to over 15 percent in 2010.” Moreover, many young adults have simply dropped out of the labor market entirely (meaning they don’t show up in the unemployment numbers). That’s illustrated by a sharp drop in the labor force partici-pation rate among both teens and young adults.5

To be sure, the Great Recession contributed to this spike in unem-ployment. But the trend was apparent well before the Recession began in 2008. And coupled with the decline in our educational performance, it has ominous implications for the future of the U.S. economy. The teen and young adult years are critically important in acquiring the skills needed to lead a successful life as an adult. The fact that so many of our young adults are not acquiring the skills they need to prosper in the 21st century—either in school or in the workplace—suggests we are in danger of creating a “wasted generation” of millions of young people who will never realize their full potential. And that would be both a human and an economic tragedy.

Many reasons have been offered for the comparative U.S. decline, including the fact that some nations do a much better job of recruiting, training, and rewarding high-quality teachers. But the most important reason we’ve lost ground is arguably that some other leading nations

4 Symonds, Pathways to Prosperity, p. 18.5 Neeta Fogg and Paul Harrington, “The Collapse of the Labor Market for 16- to 24-Year-Olds,” Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Fall 2011 (http://www.philadelphiafed.org/community-development/publica-tions/cascade/78/04_collapse-of-16-to-24-labor-market.cfm; accessed April 9, 2012).

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have developed superior systems of vocational education. These systems offer an attractive and highly effective alternative to academic programs of study designed for those who want to attend universi-ties. In effect, these nations—including many of the most prosperous nations in central and northern Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand—are offering teens multiple pathways to success.

Take Finland, which has often been celebrated as “number one” in education, thanks in part to its superior performance on PISA. In his compelling 2011 documentary—The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System—Dr. Tony Wagner noted that virtually half of Finnish teens choose the vocational track when they arrive at “upper secondary” school (which most students enter around age 16). Vocational education prepares them for skilled jobs in the highly advanced Finnish economy—which is home to Nokia, one of the early leaders in cell phones—but also for further study, including university, if they wish. Wagner was deeply impressed with how Finnish vocational education engages high school students. “I have to wonder if we gave every American high school student a choice of enrolling in high-caliber vocational education, might we not significantly reduce our epidemic dropout rate?” Wagner concluded.6

Finland is not unique in its recognition of the importance of voca-tional education. There’s growing evidence from many places that high-quality vocational education is more effective than a strictly academic approach in increasing educational performance and attain-ment, as well as in helping young adults make a successful transi-tion to the workforce. And yet the idea that vocational education is a key reason other countries are surpassing us comes as a surprise—if not a shock—to many Americans. In recent years, the U.S. has taken an increasingly academic approach to high school, with the goal of preparing students to attend four-year colleges—widely seen as the preferred pathway to success.

The work of the Pathways to Prosperity Project has challenged this thinking. We argue that the nation must adopt a broader, more holistic approach to education and youth development. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of this is that many other leading countries have already built successful multiple-pathway systems. The Pathways

6 The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System was produced by Robert Compton and released by New School Films in 2011.


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report was informed by a growing body of research on these systems. Most notably, in late 2010, OECD published Learning for Jobs, perhaps the most extensive study ever done of vocational education. Then, in late 2011 (after the Pathways report was published), Dr. Nancy Hoffman—a vice president at Jobs for the Future who was involved in the OECD study—published a book that helps translate the OECD findings for an American audience. This chapter draws heavily on her book—Schooling in the Workplace: How Six of the World’s Best Vocational Education Systems Prepare Young People for Jobs and Life (Harvard Education Press, 2011)—as well as on OECD’s Learning for Jobs.

The bottom line is that the U.S. is increasingly an outlier in its approach to education and youth development. While we continue to overemphasize the academic, four-year-college pathway, other nations are increasingly embracing high-quality vocational educa-tion. If we hope to regain our leadership in education, we must adopt a broader approach, one that puts far more emphasis on development of a high-quality, rigorous system of multiple pathways. A central component of this system must be high-quality CTE that is widely available to students across the country, rather than just in islands of excellence, as is the case today.

This chapter offers a closer look at some of the best foreign systems of vocational education. We’ll examine how they’re structured and how they work to prepare students to lead successful lives as adults. We’ll then examine the key principles and practices embodied in these high-quality systems, as well as the evidence for their effective-ness. Finally, we’ll consider what all this means for the U.S.

When Vocational Education Is Intended for Most Students: Inside the Best Foreign SystemsMost of the world’s advanced nations place far more emphasis on vocational education than we do. In the prosperous nations of central and northern Europe, as well as in Australia and New Zealand, voca-tional education is seen as a mainstream system that is best able to prepare many if not most teens to lead successful lives as adults. From Finland, the Netherlands, and Denmark to Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, 40 to 70 percent of the students in “upper secondary” school (which begins around what we call 10th grade) are involved

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in what is known as vocational education and training (VET). And in Switzerland, which has arguably the world’s best system of voca-tional education, two-thirds of students opt for this more real-world approach, while just a third take a more academic route to university.7

This is a world apart from the U.S., where CTE is often disparaged and demeaned. In recent years, we Americans have increasingly come to believe that by far the best pathway to success is to attend a four-year college. In turn, that implies that high school should be devoted to taking an academic, college-prep curriculum that leaves little room for CTE. For most students, this means that CTE courses are crowded into the small amount of the schedule allotted to “electives.” In an excellent new book on the U.S. system—College and Career Ready in the 21st Century: Making High School Matter—authors James R. Stone, the director of the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education, and Morgan V. Lewis report that 97 percent of all high school graduates in 2005 took at least one CTE course. “The average graduate earned a half credit in family and consumer sciences, a second half credit in general labor market preparation, and three credits in occupational courses,” they write. But just 21 percent of graduates qualified as CTE concentrators—meaning that they earned three or more credits in a sequence of related courses within a defined occupa-tional area. In effect, most U.S. high school students are dipping their toes into career education, even as their counterparts in countries like Germany and Switzerland are experiencing total immersion.8

Foreign systems of vocational education are not all cut from the same cloth. Germany and Switzerland are the best-known examples of the “dual apprenticeship” model, in which students typically spend three days a week at the place of employment, the other day or two being devoted to academic work in the classroom. These intense programs often last for three to four years and are carefully designed to prepare students to succeed not just in narrow jobs but in careers and adult life. Students are given an immense number of choices. In Germany, more than 1.6 million students are enrolled in training programs for some 360 occupations. And in Switzerland, students can choose from among 230 careers. The options extend far beyond the “trades” and

7 OECD, Learning for Jobs, pp. 31–34.8 Stone and Lewis, College and Career Ready.


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include many apprenticeships in what we Americans would consider “white collar” professions, such as banking and telecommunications.9

Indeed, Hoffman notes that in Switzerland one of the most popular apprenticeship programs is offered by Swisscom, the country’s leading telecom provider. In 2010, Swisscom chose 813 apprentices from more than 7,000 applicants—a degree of selectivity that rivals that of the most elite U.S. colleges. These apprentices choose from among five lines of work within Swisscom, ranging from IT specialist to technician and client-relations specialist. Each apprentice is assigned a “coach.” Apprentices undertake projects that can last from two months to a year, and that expose them to the kind of issues they would confront as full-time employees. At Swisscom, some apprentices work in the company’s phone stores, where they help customers find the phones and plans that will best suit their needs. Similarly, in an apprentice-ship offered by a Swiss regional bank, some apprentices are asked to evaluate requests for home improvement loans and to then tell the applicants if the loans have been approved.10

Other countries structure their systems of vocational education quite differently, and often put more emphasis on school-based instruction. Norway offers what is known as a “two-plus-two” system, in which students spend the first two years in school studying a mixture of academic subjects (including English, Norwegian, math, and economics) and their vocational majors. The next two years are devoted to working as apprentices, during which students are paid a portion of the regular wages associated with jobs for which they are training. The Norwegian VET program ends with a final exam that leads to a recognized qualification, typically a craftsman or jour-neyman certificate. And the training is good enough that virtually all students pass the exam.11

In the Netherlands, some 70 percent of students in upper-secondary are involved in vocational education, but most of these are in school-based programs, while just a third are in apprenticeships. Similarly, vocational education has been booming in Australia, where 60 percent of 11th- and 12th-grade students are involved. Most get much of their

9 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, pp. 76–77.10 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, p. 133.11 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, pp. 87–88.

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education in school and then leave school to work at sponsoring companies for blocks of time.12

Americans often dismiss foreign vocational education on the grounds that some countries track students into vocational programs based on their test scores. The best-known example of tracking is the German system, which sorts students into different types of middle schools after 4th grade. The academically strongest students go to a Gymnasium, which can ultimately lead to universities. The middle group attends Realschule, which at age 16 can lead to vocational education or, for those who have done best, back to a gymnasium. And the weakest students are sent to the Hauptschule, which culminates in a separate school-leaving certificate that is seen as inferior. At the Pathways to Prosperity Project, we vigorously condemn such rigid tracking systems and argue they have no place in America. Instead, we contend that individual students, along with their parents, should make decisions about which pathways they wish to pursue. It’s also important to note that the German system is hardly universal, and that many other countries have more flexible systems. Finland and Denmark, for instance, keep all students in a common, untracked comprehensive school up through grade 9 or 10, after which the students and their families decide which kind of upper secondary education to pursue.13

The controversy over tracking practices has unfortunately obscured many other commendable features of the best foreign VET systems. While many Americans sometimes still denigrate vocational educa-tion as narrow training for “dead-end” jobs, the German system is designed to equip students with a comprehensive set of competencies that will enable them to prosper as adults—including personal traits such as reliability and self-confidence and social competencies such as the ability to form good relationships, along with technical and critical thinking skills. The curriculum is not “dumbed down.” Those who complete high-quality programs have qualifications roughly equiva-lent to Americans who have earned technical degrees at community or technical colleges.14

12 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace.13 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, pp. 99–107.14 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, pp. 99–107.


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While Americans worry that vocational education will deprive students of a “liberal” education, the best VET systems incorporate a strong dose of more general subjects in their curricula. In Switzerland, for example, most VET students study two or three languages, as well as economics, history, and math. In short, the best VET systems fully recognize that they cannot hope to prepare youth for “one job for life.” That kind of career path is as extinct in Europe as it is in the U.S. But unlike many Americans, these foreign educators believe that the best way to prepare most young people for the 21st century is through a system that includes extensive exposure to working adults, real work-places, and authentic work experience.15

Compared to the U.S., the best VET systems also provide far clearer and more extensive “pathways” leading from school and/or voca-tional training to employment in the careers of the students’ choice. Most VET culminates with students earning qualifications that have real value in the labor market. In contrast, the U.S. has taken a scat-tershot approach to developing industry-recognized qualifications. Meanwhile, the European Union has embarked on a very ambitious effort to develop a “European Qualifications Network” that aims to standardize qualifications across Europe. One goal is to make it far easier for the more than 400 million people who live in the EU to move across borders to seek work—creating a kind of “common market” for labor.16

One final point is that VET also increasingly provides a pathway to postsecondary study. Switzerland, for instance, offers some 400 “professional education and training” programs (PET), which are tertiary-level programs for students who have completed VET. And in the Netherlands, about a quarter of VET students continue into tertiary-level programs after graduation. In short, students who choose the vocational route are not foreclosing the option of “going to college.”

Learning for Jobs found that across the advanced industrialized world, there is an increasing emphasis on high-quality vocational education. Countries that already offer strong VET systems are working to improve them by expanding pathways to postsecondary education, adding apprenticeship opportunities and upgrading

15 OECD, Learning for Jobs, p. 2.16 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, pp. 37–43.

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curriculum. And countries that have not been part of this tradition are now racing to create more high-quality pathways for young adults. New Zealand, for instance, has adopted an ambitious “youth guar-antee” program that aims to increase the percentage of young people earning a “level 2 certificate” (the equivalent of a high school diploma) by expanding choices for students, including more trades academies and other vocational pathways. These pathways identify and describe the skills, knowledge, and competencies valued by a broad sector of industry, as well as important curriculum objectives, and include career maps to help students plan the way forward.17

And in an effort to increase its high school graduation rate, the Canadian province of Ontario has adopted a Student Success Strategy that aims to promote four pathways leading from high school: appren-ticeship, polytechnical college, university, and actual work. A decade ago—when the effort got underway—research revealed that while Ontario high schools provided good pathways for students heading to university (what Americans call four-year colleges), only about a third of students were actually on the university pathway. Meanwhile, pathways for the majority of students were not as well developed. In response, Ontario developed the “Specialist High Skills Major,” which allows students in 11th and 12th grade to pursue programs of study organized around any of 18 economic sectors, ranging from arts and culture to manufacturing and sports and transportation. These majors must incorporate five components. First, students must earn 8 to 10 course credits, including 4 credits in their “career majors,” and two cooperative education credits designed to provide authentic work-place experience. The majors must also include industry-recognized certifications, experiential learning and career exploration, and docu-mentation of the development of skills mastered using the Ontario Skills Passport.

This program has enjoyed enormous growth. By early 2011, there were some 28,000 students participating in 540 high schools. Even more encouraging, 94 percent of the students involved in the high-skills major are successfully completing their courses, which is well above the course completion rate for students on the university

17 Materials prepared by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, summer 2011.


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pathway. As a result, Ontario’s graduation rate has risen sharply, from 68 percent to 79 percent.18

The clear conclusion is that the U.S. is increasingly an outlier in its approach to educating high school students. While other nations increasingly recognize the value of vocational education, many Americans continue to minimize its importance. Instead we’ve chosen to increase academic rigor, in the hope that this will produce the results we seek. In their new book, Stone and Lewis note that by 2005 the average high school graduate earned a total of 17.4 academic credits, up from just 12.9 in 1982. “The average student in 2005 had, in effect, experienced one full year more academic courses,” they write. And yet there’s been no real improvement of 17-year-old students on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) reading, math, and science tests, known as the Nation’s Report Card. Nor has there been a significant increase in the percentage of young adults who earn bachelor’s degrees by their mid-20s. As we wrote in the Pathways report: “College for All might be the mantra, but the hard reality is that fewer than one in three young people achieve the dream.” These disappointing results make a compelling case for care-fully studying the best foreign systems of vocational education. We turn now to what these systems can teach us about the elements that are critical to creating effective career education.

The Most Important Features of the Best Foreign Systems Though the best foreign systems vary considerably, they tend to embrace several key principles that help explain their success. The most important is extensive engagement of employers in every-thing from developing qualifications and assessments to providing ample opportunities for apprenticeships and other forms of work-based learning. For students, the most notable feature of VET is that they spend much of their time “learning for jobs,” often right at an employer’s place of work. Because students must choose from among many options, extensive career counseling is essential. Also essential are high-quality teachers to train students in the skills they need to succeed in their chosen vocations. Finally, the best foreign systems

18 Ontario Ministry of Education.

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are increasingly adopting comprehensive “youth policies” that aim to serve all young people, including those most at risk of falling behind. Let’s take a closer look at these five critical principles found in successful foreign vocational systems. 1. Extensive employer engagement: High-quality vocational

education cannot succeed without the extensive involvement of employers. In Switzerland, for instance, trade associations and professional organizations help define the curriculum as well as the qualifications needed to enter jobs. And about 30 percent of Swiss companies are directly involved in providing apprenticeships.19 In Germany, which has by far the largest VET system, “economic chambers” that are organized by occupational sector assume responsibility for quality control by monitoring the quality of training in companies, assessing the qualifications of trainers, and even conducting final exams. They also make a huge financial investment, contributing about half the overall cost of providing VET training.20 Similarly, employers in Australia, Denmark, and the Netherlands are also deeply involved in their systems.

Americans naturally wonder why these foreign employers are willing to make such a huge commitment to the education and training of young people. One reason is that they often receive financial incentives for participating. In addition, many coun-tries allow firms to pay “training wages” to apprentices, which range from 30 to 80 percent of what qualified full-time workers would be paid initially. Though the training wage typically rises as the apprentice gains experience, studies suggest that the value of the work done by apprentices often exceeds the labor costs. Meanwhile, because most apprentices are under 20 and often live at home, the reduced wage can still be a powerful incentive. But the most important reason may be that many foreign employers believe this is the best way to identify and train a high-quality workforce. Not only can

19 Vocational and Professional Education and Training in Switzerland, 2012: Facts and Figures, Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology (http://www.bbt.admin.ch/themen/berufsbildung/index.html?lang=en; accessed April 9, 2012).20 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, pp. 99–107.


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they ensure that apprentices are getting high-quality training, they also have a prolonged opportunity to observe them at work and are thus able to select the most capable for regular employment.21

2. Ample apprenticeships and other opportunities for work-based learning: Learning for Jobs identifies four types of work-based learning, two of which are typically unpaid (job shad-owing and service learning) and two of which are based at the workplace (internships and apprenticeships). Ironically, the U.S. has recognized the value of such workplace training for some of the highest-paid, most prestigious professions. Beginning lawyers often serve as “associates” with major law firms, and new doctors are expected to complete internships and residencies. But the best foreign systems make far more extensive use of apprenticeships for a much wider range of careers. While they have long been used to train people for the “trades,” increasingly apprenticeships are expanding into such “modern” fields as laboratory and hospital technicians, as well many IT occupations.22

Learning for Jobs identifies four major advantages of training young people at workplaces, rather than in schools. First, it allows students to learn and practice skills on state-of-the-art equipment under the supervision of trainers who are completely familiar with current work practices. (U.S. CTE teachers are all too aware that this is often not the case in our school-based programs.) Second, students can develop essential “soft” skills—such as learning to work in teams and dealing with customers—in real-world environments. Third, workplace learning facilitates the transition to more perma-nent employment by allowing both the apprentice and the employer to learn more about each other. And finally, while they are learning, apprentices are also making positive contri-butions to the businesses for which they work.

Of course, these benefits all hinge on the quality of workplace training. The danger is that unscrupulous companies will take

21 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace.22 Learning for Jobs.

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advantage of “cheap labor” or offer training that is so narrow that it won’t prepare the apprentice for the broader labor market. To guard against this, apprentices often sign contracts that help guarantee their rights, and industry organizations oversee and inspect companies that offer apprenticeship training. But done well, apprenticeship training offers enor-mous benefits to both students and employers.23

3. Comprehensive career counseling: Career counseling is essen-tial to help students choose careers that will be both person-ally rewarding and in-demand in the labor market. The best foreign systems make this a high priority. In Japan, Norway, and Finland, for instance, nearly 100 percent of schools schedule career guidance into the school day. Comprehensive career guidance educates students about the broad labor market and then helps students make informed choices about the careers for which they are best suited. In addition, to ensure that students are being trained for jobs that will actually exist, these countries regulate openings for apprenticeships so that they correspond to expected labor market demand.

Americans are well aware of the problems that can under-mine career counseling. In many other countries, as in the U.S., “counselors” often spend much of their time dealing with the psychological and social challenges faced by teens, rather than career guidance. Many of these counselors don’t have a comprehensive understanding of labor market oppor-tunities and consequently steer students toward only a limited range of options—like four-year colleges in the U.S. Learning for Jobs argues that, given these challenges, career guidance should be its own profession, separate from psychological and social counseling. And these professionals should be well trained and have access to a wide range of up-to-date mate-rials on labor market opportunities. Without such guidance, students often make critically important career decisions on the basis of advice from well-meaning but poorly informed friends and family members. And this approach—which is all too common in the U.S.—tends to perpetuate inequalities,

23 Learning for Jobs.


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since low-income parents are less likely to know how to direct their children to higher-status occupations.24

The Swiss have one of the world’s best systems. Career guid-ance counselors must complete a rigorous training program that includes a year-long internship and culminates in a specialized diploma. For students, career education and career guidance are mandatory beginning in middle school. This begins at a student’s school but often continues at so-called BIZ centers, which are separate institutions designed to provide career information and guidance. In addition, middle-school students may take part in short “work place-ments” that give them a real taste of what an apprenticeship is like. Most students take part in these before making a final choice. Similarly, to help ensure quality and availability, New Zealand has created a government agency—Careers New Zealand—that provides career information, guidance, and support to both students and adults. Careers NZ works closely with business and industry to stay abreast of emerging opportunities, as well as with counselors in schools to help them offer high-quality career programs.25

4. High-quality teachers: The quality of teachers and trainers, both in vocational schools and at the workplace, is an essen-tial ingredient in building an excellent system. The “meis-ters” who oversee German apprentices are legendary for their expertise in their fields, as well as for the exacting standards they typically set for students. But Learning for Jobs found that many countries are struggling to build a high-quality corps of teachers and trainers. And this challenge is compounded by the fact that many vocational teachers are nearing the end of their teaching careers.

One critical issue is ensuring that trainers are current with the latest industry practices and procedures. Teachers and trainers who work in school-based settings can easily lose touch with evolving practices. One Australian study, for instance, found

24 Learning for Jobs.25 Learning for Jobs; interview conducted by the author with Careers New Zealand.

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that nearly three out of four full-time trainers felt that their technical knowledge was not up to date.26 That’s why the OECD report endorsed the practice of employing trainers who spend part of their time working in industry. Of course, this is easier if the students are trained directly at the place of employment, as they are in the dual-apprenticeship model.

To help ensure the quality of teachers and trainers, the Swiss have created a Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (SFIVET), which provides programs for those who want to teach in vocational schools and professional colleges, as well as continuing education for existing teachers and trainers. It also conducts research and evaluations of current teaching. In addition, companies must meet certain quality standards before they are allowed to take on apprentices. And the Swiss cantons employ inspectors who interview appren-tices and employees in participating companies to ensure the quality of training.27

5. Comprehensive youth policies: Countries with the most successful vocational education programs have usually adopted financial policies and practices that strongly encourage young people to continue and complete their education. The practice of paying apprentices—even if they receive only a “training wage”—gives students a strong financial incentive and some measure of financial independence. And because their work is intimately tied to their studies, they don’t face the kind of juggling act that so many American students do. In the U.S., many college students must work to help pay for their education, and yet that work is often disconnected from their programs of study. In sharp contrast, students enrolled in foreign apprenticeship programs don’t have to pay for their education. Their countries tend to view education as a public investment in the nation’s future rather than (as in the U.S.) solely a private good.

Some countries go even further, providing “guarantees” aimed at youth who are most at-risk of dropping out. Australia, for

26 Learning for Jobs.27 Learning for Jobs.


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instance, has adopted a policy that provides that youth aged 15 to 24 are entitled to education and/or employment training. That’s the carrot. The stick is that young people who refuse to take part risk losing government-provided support. This is a powerful incentive for students to remain engaged and enrolled in their programs. Similarly, to help ensure that all young people earn the equivalent of a high-school diploma, New Zealand has embraced a youth guarantee policy that includes creating more “free” opportunities for youth to get training and education, alternative pathways, and expanded career education and counseling. The bottom line is that these countries recognize the huge long-term benefit of ensuring that young people are prepared for success. In contrast, in the U.S., we are effectively tolerating a situation in which millions of young Americans are entering their 20s without the skills and education they need to prosper in the 21st century economy.28

The Superior Outcomes of the Best Foreign Systems The most persuasive argument in support of the best foreign systems is that they are clearly doing a much better job of helping their young people successfully transition from adolescence to productive lives as adults. It is not surprising that high-quality vocational education is more effective than a more academic approach in helping young people enter the workforce. But there are three other benefits that might not be as obvious. First, there is persuasive evidence that most teens actually learn more in high-quality vocational education. Second, this pedagogical effectiveness—combined with the fact that students in vocational education tend to be more engaged—helps produce higher rates of attainment. And third, work-based learning—and especially apprenticeships—are especially effective in helping teens navigate the transition to adulthood. Let’s take a closer look at these four benefits of high-quality vocational education:

1. The pedagogical benefits: Learning for Jobs presents impressive evidence that from late adolescence on, most teens learn best in structured programs that combine work and learning. It’s

28 Presentation prepared by the New Zealand Ministry of Education; Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace.

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not just that, as the report argues, “workplaces provide a good place to learn both hard skills on modern equipment and soft skills in terms of working with people in a real-world context.”29 Learning in a real-world environment also helps mathematical principles and the need for literacy skills and other academic concepts and objectives come alive in a way that they simply don’t (at least for many students) in a classroom. That’s borne out by the PISA assessments. In 2009, U.S. 15-year-olds ranked well below their counterparts in many countries that place far more emphasis on vocational education, including Finland, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand. The same trend was observed in science literacy.30 The performance of U.S. teens was disappointing. They ranked just 17th on science achievement, and 25th on math achievement. At a time when so many educators and business leaders are arguing we need to devote more attention to the STEM subjects, this should be a wakeup call.

Ironically, the U.S. has long embraced work-based learning for some of our most prestigious professions. Surgeons, for example, are trained in rigorous residency programs in which they must spend hours in the operating room, working under the guidance of master surgeons. Similarly, many of our most promising law-school graduates become associates in large law firms, where they work alongside experienced part-ners. But when it comes to high school students—and espe-cially those who are struggling academically—we somehow think the best way for them to learn is to force them to sit in a classroom all day. Such struggling students are often told they cannot take CTE classes until they master the academics. Yet in many of the countries that are surpassing us, educa-tors believe that a better way to develop academic skills is to

29 Learning for Jobs.30 Highlights from PISA 2009: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy in an International Context, National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004.pdf; accessed April 9, 2012).


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embed them in high-quality vocational programs that include work-based learning.31

2. Higher attainment: Every recent U.S. president has bemoaned the comparative decline in U.S. educational attainment, and then vowed to reverse this troubling trend, often by redou-bling our efforts to improve academic education. Yet many of the countries that are surpassing us are those that place greater priority on vocational education. Moreover, many countries with strong vocational systems have made greater strides in increasing attainment in recent years. One powerful reason for this is that students in high-quality vocational education are often more engaged than those in academic education. Indeed, studies of why U.S. students drop out of high school show that boredom and a feeling that the education is irrelevant to their future are often key drivers. But students in vocational educa-tion don’t wonder if their education is relevant—it clearly is, even if they ultimately decide they don’t want to pursue those particular vocations.

The effectiveness of vocational education in increasing attain-ment is apparent in the leading systems. Consider Switzerland, where two-thirds of upper secondary students choose to enroll in vocational education. That’s helped Switzerland achieve a 90 percent upper-secondary graduation rate (and students with this qualification are often ahead of U.S. high school graduates). Increasingly, these graduates are going on to post-secondary education. Similarly, in Germany, most students earn “VET qualifications” at the conclusion of their appren-ticeship, which certifies that they have completed the training and education needed to enter a field. The standards for these VET qualifications are quite rigorous, and certainly equivalent to what Americans must learn to earn some postsecondary degrees, such as many AA degrees. In effect, perhaps 75 percent of German students earn what we Americans would consider a postsecondary certificate, well above our own rate of around 50 percent.32

31 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, pp. 99–107.32 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace, pp. 99–107.

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3. The impact on youth employment and the transition to the labor market: As you would expect, high-quality vocational education is excellent preparation for entering the workforce, especially since students are often required to earn certificates with real value in the labor market. Another factor is that employers in countries with strong apprenticeship systems are already committed to helping young people find their way in the labor market. In the strongest economies, the payoff has been dramatic. In mid-2010—despite a sluggish recovery from the Great Recession—unemployment among youth under age 25 was less than 10 percent in Germany. And in Switzerland it was under 5 percent. In contrast, youth unemployment is around 50 percent in the southern European countries of Greece and Spain, where the economies are much weaker and apprenticeship programs are nowhere near as strong.33

But even though the U.S. economy is significantly outper-forming Europe, the unemployment rate among youth 16 to 24 has more than doubled over the past decade, and for teens it reached 24 percent in early 2012—nearly three times the national unemployment rate of 8.3 percent. Bad as they are, these figures understate the problem. For in recent years the percentage of teens and young adults who have “dropped out” of the labor market has risen sharply. In 2011 the percentage of teens who were employed fell to just 26 percent, down from over 45 percent in 2000. Similarly, the percentage of young adults who are employed fell to 61 percent, from 72 percent in 2000. “These are the lowest employment/population ratios for both teens and young adults ever recorded in the U.S. since the end of World War II,” writes Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.34

33 Hoffman, Schooling in the Workplace.34 Andrew Sum et al., The Great Recession of 2007–2009, the Lagging Jobs Recovery, and the Missing 5–6 Million National Labor Force Participants in 2011: Why We Should Care, Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern Univer-sity, January 2012 (http://www.northeastern.edu/clms/wp-content/uploads/Lagging-Jobs-Recovery-Report-jan-2012.pdf; accessed April 9, 2012).


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4. Impact on youth development and transition to adulthood: There is also impressive evidence that the most intensive forms of workplace learning—apprenticeships and sustained internships—are especially effective in meeting the develop-mental needs of young people. They provide a structure for supporting the tricky transition from adolescence to adult-hood. “Apprenticeship has always done more than teach a specific trade,” argues Stephen Hamilton in his seminal book, Apprenticeship for Adulthood. “Being a productive worker calls for many of the same qualities as being an active citizen and a nurturant family member. Fostering young people’s growth in one of these adult roles improves their ability to fill the others.” Indeed, Hamilton notes that after completing a three-year apprenticeship, German youth typically assume “adult” jobs around the age of 18. In contrast, many American youth end up floundering until their mid-20s.35

The Implications for the United StatesThis review of the best foreign systems of vocational education will hopefully serve as a wake-up call to Americans concerned about the future of our youth and, ultimately, our economy. It’s not just that these systems are surpassing us in educational excellence. They are also doing a much better job of preparing their young people to succeed in the 21st-century economy. And because they have embraced a broader, more holistic approach to education, they are also reaching a larger portion of the young population than we do with our system, which is so heavily focused on an academic approach to education.

As readers of Pathways to Prosperity know, these findings led us to call for a systemic change in the American approach to educating our youth in high school and beyond. We did not argue that America should try to import any foreign model. Rather, we suggested we could use the key principles of the best foreign systems to help shape a uniquely American answer to the challenge we face. Our vision is built around three elements: multiple pathways; an expanded role for employers; and a new “social compact” with our youth, in which we

35 Stephen F. Hamilton, Apprenticeship for Adulthood: Preparing Youth for the Future (New York: Free Press, 1990).

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assume more collective responsibility for the education and training of our youth. The Career Pathways movement is broadly consistent with this vision.

Many Americans despair that we can ever achieve this vision. Our dominant educational culture—which all too often demeans CTE—is deeply entrenched. Even so, we already have some outstanding examples of models that open up multiple pathways to success. They include the Massachusetts network of regional vocational-technical high schools, Oklahoma’s technology centers, and Tennessee’s tech-nology centers. Our challenge now is to move from such islands of excellence to a more comprehensive system of pathways to prosperity.

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