Balancing the skills equation: Key issues and challenges for policy and practice

Description

Governments worldwide assume that national competitiveness can be improved by developing workforce skills. This book critically examines this 'high skills' vision at both policy and practice levels. It challenges an oversimplified policy rhetoric that underestimates the complexity of the processes involved in developing a skilled workforce. The book focuses on key issues relating to the high skills agenda: skills and political economy; different investment strategies for producing skills; qualification systems and learning. A multidisciplinary team of authors from a range of disciplines, including economics, management and education, provides the cross-cutting international and comparative analysis. Editorial comment links their explorations to wider questions of skill formation processes and overarching questions are addressed through in-depth analysis of the roles of higher education, apprenticeship and formal school learning in skill formation. Balancing the skills equation is important reading for policy makers, academics and graduate students interested in social policy, education and labour markets. It will also be of interest to Vocational Education and Training (VET) practitioners.

Geoff Hayward is the Associate Director of the ESRC Research Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) based at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick, and a Lecturer in Educational Studies at the University of Oxford. Susan James is a Research Officer at SKOPE, Department of Educational Studies, University of Oxford.

"This is a very topical work of high policy relevance that represents an important contribution to the analysis of skills supply. It clearly stands out from the competition." John Field, Division of Academic Innovation and Continuing Education, University of Stirling