Hello Francois,
Since you asked....
[snip]
what - since the 17th - 18th centuries in Europe, until 4-5 decades ago??? - was the rationale to host vocational training within universities?
[snip]
my understanding is that, in NZ at least, vocational training became more important to universities as the notion of human capital took hold in economic development policy.
During the 1950s and 60s, techniques such as 'streaming' into academic and technical classes at secondary school and the 'scaling' of examinations selected the few who were to be highly educated at university. This was justified partly by the idea of 'manpower planning' developed during WW2, and was supposed to gear education systems to the economy. This type of centralist planning began to fall out of favour in the 60s and 70s, along with a general disillusionment about the welfare state.
Universal access to higher education now became the ideal. Curricula were developed that aimed to improve retention rates and keep working classes in education. Senior secondary school years were no longer solely oriented to university entrance. New pathways between school, university and work fed industry requirements back into secondary education, dismantling the possibility of a core curriculum, differentiating secondary school subjects and creating more 'choice'.
For a long time after WW2, economic perspectives had not been thought appropriate for steering higher education policy. Economic ministries didn't see higher education as an economic instrument, and Ministries of Education didn't want to address the economic role of higher education. But during the 1980s, theories of endogenous growth became popular, which figured human capital as an input to production. It became normal to factor human creativity and innovation into technological development for a post-industrial knowledge economy - this became the most important role for higher education.
Now, some believe the problem is how to disoblige school leavers from making university their preferential choice after compulsory schooling, and how to protect university disciplines and related scholarly and intellectual resources from the vagaries of student popularity judgements.
It more complicated than this, but I won't go on.
Best
Amanda
Dr Amanda Bill
Institute of Design for Industry and Environment
College of Creative Arts
Massey University, Wellington
New Zealand
+64 4 8015799 ex 62555
email: [log in to unmask]
On 12/10/11 4:04 PM, "Francois Nsenga" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hello everyone
Could someone reminds us what - since the 17th - 18th centuries in Europe,
until 4-5 decades ago??? - was the rationale to host vocational training
within universities? Perhaps knowing such a rationale will help debating
more objectively whether or not 'PhDs are a threat to design education'.
Many thanks in advance.
Francois
Montreal
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