In recent decades, higher education has experienced a massive expansion worldwide, which has often been linked to increasing higher education diversification. New sectors and new types of institutions emerged with this massification process to offer more diversified types of advanced training. At the same time, this expansion was often embedded in…

A vast amount of research is devoted to identifying factors that predict early school leaving. However, there is no simple explanation because the results show that young people leave education prematurely for various reasons, such as their level of school involvement, their background characteristics and different school systems. This article…

For many good and well-known reasons, it is now widely accepted that there is a need for more integrated concepts of learning (and studying) in the workplace. This article focuses on the notions and experiences gained from new educational programmes of work-based learning (WBL) in vocational education and training (VET) or--to be…

This article analyses whether graduates in university vocational courses benefited from better labour market outcomes in France than those in academic courses. We focus on bachelor degrees in France, comparing "general" or "academic" degrees with "vocational" degrees. The vocational bachelor degree was created in 1999…

This article analyses reforms addressing and affecting the curriculum and organisation of Swedish upper secondary education over 40 years, up to an initiative by the present non-socialist government. The aim is to analyse the current reform of upper secondary education and relate it to previous reforms during a 40-year period in terms of…

There is an ongoing discussion about teacher education today: its organisation, its academic status and the competence that results from different programmes. There is no one best way to organise teacher education. Rather, the appropriateness of organisation is related to the desired aims. In this article, we discuss one way to organise and…

In this article, we analyse the organisation of the doctorate in communication sciences in the context of the overall discussion on the changing organisation of doctoral studies in Switzerland. We focus on three tensions which appear central for the field, namely the employment status of doctoral students, the importance of academic vs.…

Implications of a gradual change in the "pecking order" within higher education in the course of the 1970s are discussed. This change cuts across the traditional university/nonuniversity distinctions, and illustrates the growing vulnerability of certain types and disciplines of university education. Focus is on graduate employability. (MSE)

Developments in both universities and public sector postsecondary institutions are reviewed. Discussed are: status differences, government control, enrollment from 1971 to 1981, effects of structural change, women, engineering education reform proposals, professionalized studies, government policy, and staff reductions. (LB)