How Collective Skill Formation Systems Adapt to a Knowledge Economy

Abstract

AbstractCollective skill formation systems remain attractive in the knowledge economy. However, these systems are heavily dependent on the capacity of actors to cooperate, which in turn depends on their ability to find win-win solutions to the challenges these systems confront. This concluding chapter discusses five main themes that help to understand how collective skill formation systems adapt to a knowledge economy. First, one constant preoccupation of employers is to keep dual training attractive for talented youths and avoid academic drift. This is clearly visible in their support for measures aiming to protect the value of VET degrees, to improve permeability of the overall education system, and to develop new hybrid forms of training that combine academic and vocational training. Second, in some countries, there are attempts to upskill collective skill formation systems. Such measures include investments in post-secondary VET or new forms of cooperation between firm-based training and higher-education institutions. Third, employers’ attachment to collective skill formation remains strong, but they increasingly experience problems in acting collectively, which fuels segmentalist tendencies. Fourth, over recent decades, states have developed a multitude of measures to make collective skill formation systems more inclusive. These measures tend to be external to the collective skill formation system and are rarely intrusive with regard to the role played by employers. Fifth, states put pressure on collective skill formation systems to make them more inclusive, which often—but not always—creates considerable frictions, especially if inclusion measures risk undermining the perceived quality of training.