Work-Based Learning as a Field of Study

Abstract

A growing feature of global higher education policy is the explicit link with economic performance. Indeed there is much that mirrors the development in the major economic regions of the world. From Singapore to Melbourne and from Mumbai to San Francisco, directing public educational institutions to provide public capital for their student bodies and then charge them has become a driving imperative of policy. The example I offer here is how European educational strategy has assertively included the vast and varied field of vocational education and training within the lifelong learning perspective. Its commitment to entwine formal education, workplace learning and governmental policy has a leading part in the economic debate on the role of higher education in Europe’s economic development. A desire to develop transparency and comparability in all forms of learning and qualifications, together with the associated required quality of assessment and teaching, has been an underlying and recurring theme in the Bologna Process. The commitment of European educational policy to lifelong learning generates a progressive transnational framework supporting innovative practice by higher education institutions at the local and national levels.KeywordsHigh EducationHigh Education InstitutionIntellectual CapitalPractical WisdomPublic CapitalThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.