Vocationalism in mass higher education : international perspectives on the challenges of the labour market and the workplace

This book addresses the complex issue of the growing need for vocational content to increase the employability of the graduates in the context of mass higher education.

Today, in a rapidly changing and globalising economy, accompanied by a fast rise in new information technologies, there are increasing pressures on higher education systems all over the world to rethink knowledge production and learning.

The last ten years or so have seen many efforts to reorganise universities and to realign the missions of mass expansion and 'new' vocationalism to meet the demands of the so-called globalised knowledge society.

In some cases, major organisational and epistemological shifts in the forms of knowledge production and learning have occurred which have enormous implications for defining the role and mission of the university in modern day society and more important, new challenges for forging knowledge producing partnerships between the academy and industry in a climate of increasing marketisation of higher education. This comprehensive study documents the policy shifts towards more vocational content in mass higher education and the associated implications and challenges of new forms of knowledge production, and new forms of knowledge-producing partnerships between higher education and the labour market.

It examines both the academic sector and the labour sector and presents innovative approaches and illustrative examples for those institutional and national decision-makers considering introducing or widening the vocational orientation of their study programmes.