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Modern development of vocational education requires the joint participation of multiple departments and entities, and industry-education cooperation is a basic requirement. Against the backdrop of the third industrial revolution, cultivating skilled, innovative graduates and transforming the model of industrial technical innovation requires building a new, coordinated collaboration between higher vocational education and industrial development. From an open science perspective, collaboration between higher vocational education and industrial development takes place based on the basic inherent logic of entities' heterogeneous innovative capabilities. Based on theoretical research and case studies, the collaboration between higher vocational education and industrial development must focus on establishing common visions for diverse industrial and educational entities, common interest foundations for school-enterprise microentities, and order parameters of collaborative frameworks and on establishing a long-lasting process for coordinating diverse school-enterprise entities, value integration, interest integration, resource integration, and collaborative implementation. [This article was translated by Jeff Keller.]

The importance of developing a knowledgeable, skilled, adaptable and flexible workforce that engages in continuous learning is outlined in the 2015 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) document "Unleashing the Potential: Transforming Technical and Vocational Education and Training". While this statement reflects an aspiration for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) graduates as skilled members of a twenty-first-century workforce, educators, trainers and organisations are implicated. Indeed, it is incumbent on them to be closely involved in the development of such a workforce. To understand, prepare for and provide such workforce development, learning organisations and educators must undertake their own learning and development. Education and training with a focus on providing for a knowledgeable, skilled, adaptable and flexible workforce is only possible when the educational workforce has the means to achieve such a goal. In "Strengthening TVET Teacher Education: Report of the UNESCO/UNEVOC Online Conference", it is stated that the development of a strong TVET teacher workforce is a vital part of a strong TVET system. Pre-service teacher education and continuing professional development are identified as key components.

Purpose: In response to recent calls for research relating to employers' perceptions of the workplace readiness of new graduates in a variety of fields, the purpose of this paper is to report North Florida employers' perceptions of information technology (IT) program graduates' workplace readiness. These findings are relevant to stakeholders in growing technology regions. Design/methodology/approach :Researchers conducted 18 semi-structured interviews with IT employers in North Florida. Data were deductively coded with codes derived from national standards. Interviewee verbatim was also inductively coded by theme. Findings: While employers valued a blend of technical and general skills and hands-on experience, they also sought new professionals who possessed fundamental understandings of business and computer programming to tailor their problem-solving skills to the specific company environment. Research limitations/implications: This research represents a limited number of employer viewpoints in one representative community. Practical implications: Ongoing industry input into curricula and expanded experiential opportunities may ensure that graduates are prepared to address current and future IT developments. Because the region under study was typical of many regions with growing technology sectors, these findings may inform partnerships, curriculum, and program design. Originality/value: Given the rapid growth and constant advances of the IT sector, institutions with IT degree programs are challenged to ensure that their curricula are current and meeting the needs of employers. This study's findings may offer timely insight into elements of workforce preparedness.

The purpose of this paper is to provide another perspective on the problematic nature of the concept of skill and in particular a tendency to place a lower value on certain types of job in the service sector than those in other industries. Qualitative research was conducted in three service industries in Australia, comprising interviews with key industry stakeholders, case studies in two companies for each of four occupations, and validation by a forum of industry experts. We present evidence of the existence of substantial levels of skill in occupations which are traditionally considered low-skilled. The data are utilised to create a new model which represents factors which contribute to perceptions of skill in occupations. The analysis extends and deepens current understanding of aspects of skill, primarily, but not only, building on social construction theory to posit a new model for analysing skill. New factors are added to the analysis of skill in occupations. The project was exploratory and covered only four occupations in three industry areas. The method could be utilised in a broader-scale project. The paper is designed to contribute to debates on the nature of skill and also has policy and practical implications in the fields of human resource practice and training.

There is a growing body of research interrogating the discursive construction of "rural" in negative terms--as lacking, in decline or in crisis. This paper contributes to this body of literature by taking as its point of departure skilled trades training in Canada's most easterly province, Newfoundland and Labrador. To meet the labour demand associated with industrial projects in rural and remote areas, the provincial government has invested in strategies to encourage youth to enrol in certified training programmes in the skilled trades. This paper examines the contradictory and incomplete ways in which individualized labour market subjects are produced through a combination of economic restructuring and government policy initiatives related to training and apprenticeships, and considers what this means for how young people think about and experience the rural. I argue that rural places are largely framed in economic terms, either as in decline and crisis or as industrial sites of resource extraction, and that by discursively linking youth outmigration and skilled labour shortages, the sustainability of rural places and the province is individualized and downloaded onto youth, ignoring the structured inequalities that mediate access to training and employment.

Occupations differ in their prestige, but little research has examined how workers manage working in a low-prestige occupation. This case study with retail-clerk apprentices in Switzerland uncovers the identity strategies the apprentices employ to help them normalise the situation they find themselves in: they are learning an occupation that is not assumed to require any specific knowledge or skills. We base our arguments on theories about occupational prestige, identity and stigma management, as well as on a qualitative study in VET (vocational education and training) schools. Three identity strategies are dominant among retail-clerk apprentices and are deeply embedded within the retail context and the Swiss apprenticeship programme. First, apprentices embrace ideas of discontinuous careers and lifelong learning, which encourage them to improve their occupational position through mobility within or outside the retail sector. Second, the VET programme builds on apprentices' consumer interests and encourages their self-valorisation through the prestige of products and shops. Third, apprentices emphasise that retail work is skilled work, a strategy that is consistent with the positive societal perception of the Swiss VET system. These strategies provide insights into how apprentices construct positive occupational identities although they are placed low on the occupational prestige hierarchy.

Educators must prepare today's youth not only for jobs requiring a four-year college experience, but also for careers that demand more than a high school diploma but something other than a traditional university degree. This is why technical schools can be a viable option for training students with skills needed for a particular type of employment, such as automotive technology. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) "Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2010-2011 Edition," the automotive industry will need 35,000 new technicians nationally through 2018, and some estimates put this number as high as 50,000 a year. As graduating high school students deal with labor market challenges, including international outsourcing and high unemployment rates, counselors should help students expand their career search to consider new option beyond two- and four-year colleges. Counselors can provide resources and information to students that outline promising career paths as an automotive, diesel, collision repair, marine or motorcycle technician. By helping students consider all of their options after high school, including a technical career, counselors could open the door to new opportunities.

The dominant organizational form of vocational education and training in Switzerland is the dual-track system, in which trainees sign an apprenticeship contract with a training company. Notably, 10% to 40% of those contracts are terminated prematurely each year, depending on region and occupational category, which is an important topic of concern for politics, practice and research. Thus, premature contract terminations (PCTs) are associated with high costs for society, companies, and young people. This study of 335 companies involving cooks and painters from German-speaking Switzerland aims to investigate the relationship between training quality and PCT. Of these companies, 136 had been affected by a PCT, and 199 had not. The results indicate that training at the workplace is universally of rather high quality. In line with the previous literature, trainees evaluate quality significantly lower than trainers. Furthermore, there are considerable differences between the two occupations: cooks evaluate their training quality more positively than painters. Moreover, cluster analyses indicate that high quality training can help companies avoid PCTs.

In this study, we investigated high school graduates' school-to-work transition by considering their post-school occupational skill levels. Using an ordinal growth model analysis, occupational status increased in an arch-shaped curve as the number of years after high school graduation also increased. This growth trajectory was further related to the presence of training certificates, parental education levels, cognitive ability, and gender. The course of study did not significantly relate to occupational status. Participation in work-based education, including cooperative and mentor programs, related to the likelihood of students advancing to high-skill-level occupations. Further, we applied propensity score weighting to deal with plausible sample selection bias.

"College and Career Pathways" is an educational policy initiative widely acclaimed as a commonsensical and effective measure to ease students' transitions between secondary and postsecondary education and into the middle-skill jobs. This article investigates the internal dynamics of the "Pathways'" curricular model as well as its underpinning assumptions and implications. First, it situates this development within the broader context of school-to-work reform efforts and explores its connections to the neoliberal ideological thinking. Drawing on Leonardo's (2012) critical "raceclass" theory of education as a conceptual lens, and with close attention to the new order of job categories, it then examines the rise of "Pathways" in light of the realities of class, race, and the asymmetrical power relations that characterize the modern nation state. The article concludes that "pathways" is best understood when situated within the dynamics of production and reproduction of a new class of workers for the new racio-economic structure of the 21st century.

Universities, as part of the neoliberal regime imposed on them, are being co-opted into a "war for talent", in which national economic success is heavily invested. We examine part of this "war" that affects universities directly--the recruitment of "the brightest and the best" internationally mobile students and their subsequent retention by the host country as high-skill workers. After an account of this war for talent and its implications for higher education, we review the literature on study-migration transitions by international students and identify gaps in both data and theorization. We propose a three-part model that uses the notion of "flows" to organize a research agenda in this field and the possible roles of universities in implementing it. We conclude that only by resisting full recruitment into this global talent war can academic researchers continue to maintain the integrity and value of their professional and disciplinary calling.

Human capital investment is a necessary condition for improving labour market outcomes in most countries. Empirical studies to investigate human capital and its linkages on the labour demand side are, however, relatively scarce due to limitations of firm-level data-sets. Using firm-level data from the Thai manufacturing sector, this paper aims to investigate the effects of skill and human capital on labour productivity. Costs and benefits of human capital improvement are compared indicating that hiring workers who have higher education as well as providing them with in-service training has a statistically and significantly positive impact on an increase in labour productivity. However, hiring workers who have higher education yields less benefit than costs which come from higher average wage expenditures. However, providing training should contribute more benefit than cost. Besides education and training measures, we also measure workers' skill levels into cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills and find that skill in information technology is found to be the most important cognitive skill for increasing labour productivity among Thai manufacturers. Non-cognitive skills such as those in leadership, time-management and communication are also important and seem to have positive relationship to labour productivity among Thai manufacturers.

It is not unusual to find that employers operating in low-pay sectors are reluctant to provide vocational training. Frequently they fear benefitting competitors as better-skilled employees command a more competitive position in the labour market and may choose to leave one employer and take their newly acquired skills elsewhere. However, in contrast the expectation might reasonably be that employers in more skilled sectors would be more enthusiastic about such training particularly when the financial, environmental and human costs, of errors are high. This paper therefore analyses vocational training provision in the more skilled sector of professional seafaring. In this sector, accidents may cause massive environmental damage and loss of life, and may incur substantial fines and financial penalties. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative data, the paper focuses upon the adequacy of the training that is provided to seafarer officers in relation to the introduction of new technology aboard their vessels.

A recent International Labour Organization (ILO) report has documented the limited opportunities for women in the labour market (ILO, 2016). The report shows that women face higher unemployment and underemployment than men, are more often employed in the informal labour market and in family enterprises, and are overrepresented in lower skill sectors. A range of factors contribute to the high proportion of unemployed and underemployed women. These factors include cultural norms regarding the place of women in employment, the role of women in domestic and care work, and the lack of adequate job market opportunities. Women all over the world spend a disproportionate amount of time doing domestic and care work. This time commitment is even higher in low- and middle-income countries, where the division of domestic labor often follows traditional patterns and women assume most, if not all family responsibilities (ILO, 2009). The primary objective of this systematic review is to synthesize the evidence on the effects of vocational and business training programs on women's participation in higher skilled, higher valued occupations and other labour market outcomes, including employment, income, working conditions, societal worth, and economic empowerment. The secondary objective is to improve the understanding of the barriers to, and facilitators of, the effectiveness of vocational and business training for women and how they operate. To achieve these goals will address the following research questions: (1) What are the effects of vocational and business training programs on women's participation in higher skilled, higher valued occupations, women's income, working conditions, societal worth, and economic empowerment? Secondary Research Question (2) What are the barriers to, and facilitators of, the effectiveness of vocational and business training programs? and (3) What are the program design and implementation characteristics associated with effective vocational and business training programs for women?

The author earned a physics degree in college and then failed to find a job in the aerospace industry. He writes of how he fell back on his training as an electrician for sustenance and from that extrapolates how the trades have become confused with work of the hands rather than of the mind. He uses the venerable debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois a century ago over whether African-Americans should direct their energies and community development toward vocational or academic goals as example of his prescription for America today. Du Bois, who championed academics, won that debate, not only for the black community, but for all of America. It is a debate that needs to be reopened the author says.

Higher education is a key sector for the United Kingdom contributing over £70 billion of output. It functions in an increasingly complex operating, regulatory, and legislative environment that has led to an increased need for effective nonacademic business managers. This study evaluates the benefits of a specialist master of business administration (MBA) in higher education management in the UK. The results indicate that the MBA provides intrinsic benefits such as opportunities to improve management practice and increases in confidence levels in the workplace. It also provides extrinsic benefits of increased pay.

This article analyzes the characteristics of the existing and expected deficit of professional skills and qualities of workers employed by Russian companies. Analyzed factors include generic skills, soft or behavioral skills, the influence of the qualification, and shortage on the effectiveness of the companies as a whole. The data is based on a survey of employers. [This article was translated by Kim Braithwaite.]

This article examines the dynamics of brain circulation through a historical review of the debates over international migration of human capital and a case study on Chinese-Canadian academics. Interviews with 22 Chinese-Canadian professors who originally came from China provide rich data regarding the possibilities and problems of the contemporary global mobility. The findings indicate that brain circulation is possible in the case of Chinese-Canadian academics but that certain conditions and factors, especially some disparity issues associated with international migration of human capital, have prevented a more effective brain circulation from taking place. This article argues that addressing these disparity issues will be an indispensable step toward fostering an effective global human capital circulation and knowledge exchange.

In the first decade of this century, India became one of the world's fastest growing large economies, and began to face serious skill-related shortages of workers. Its TVET system has not responded adequately to the growth in demand for semi-skilled and skilled workers. This article describes six sets of reforms that India's educational planners and policy-makers must put into place if these shortages are not to constrain India's ability to benefit from the demographic dividend.

The decline in manufacturing and growth of service-based jobs has prompted many social theorists to argue that the ability of working-class men to construct meaningful and rewarding careers is becoming ever more limited. Despite using the universal label "working class", the experience of skilled working-class men has been largely ignored. This article explores 26 work history interviews collected from 14 former Royal Dockyard tradesmen in South-East England and 12 of these men's sons and grandsons. Findings from this research challenge the idea that most men were/and are passive victims of industrial change. By contrast, the majority of men in this study managed to carefully adapt to and navigate the transition from industrial to post-industrial work whilst still retaining a "linear life narrative" to give meaning to their evolving careers and lives.

This article examines two Canadian high school work experience programs that focus on rural youth. The first encourages students to consider work in skilled trades, while the second encourages them to become qualified as healthcare aides. Both programs were designed to encourage high school students to explore careers in fields where labor market shortages were anticipated. Yet as this study shows, they are likely to perpetuate gender-based inequalities in the economic and social mobility of rural youth. We draw on socio-cultural learning theories to show how socialization and workplace practices serve to reinforce gendered participation patterns in healthcare and trades. We conclude with the recommendation that policy related to youth career exploration and work experience include strategies to disrupt social processes that systematically disadvantage rural women.