As unemployment levels rise, so education and training move into the policy spotlight. For the government, this is a very uncomfortable place to be right now. A number of large companies have withdrawn from the flagship Work Programme--under which jobseekers are invited to take up unpaid work placements of between two and eight weeks--amid…

Every spring, millions of 18-year-olds graduate from high school and start on one of three paths: (1) college; (2) the military; or (3) work. College is the choice encouraged most often by high-school guidance counselors, and for good reason. By 2020, two out of every three jobs will require some sort of higher education, according to the Center…

Five years ago, in "Teaching History 132", Harris and Haydn drew attention to the fact that while the vast majority of Key Stage 3 students claimed to enjoy history and even to regard it as a useful subject, relatively few of them were able to explain why they thought it was so important. Geoff Baker set out to address this issue, in…

The European Union is deeply concerned with how education responds to the needs of society. The purpose of this article is to analyze the transition from the University education to the labour market for the IT specialists in the city of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In order to achieve this, a survey was conducted among the recent graduates in the IT…

This position paper describes the Division of Career Development and Transition's stance and recommendations for identifying and promoting secondary transition evidence-based practices and predictors of postschool success for students with disabilities. Recommendations for experimental research, correlational research, and secondary analysis of…

Psychometrically sound evaluation measures are vital for examining the contribution of professional training to organizational success in a reliable manner. As training evaluations tend to be both time-consuming and labor-intensive, there is an increasing demand for economic evaluation inventories. Simultaneously, evaluation measures have to meet…

Previous researchers have suggested that in order to be successful in the hospitality industry, students need to obtain work experience in addition to completing their degrees. Although the benefit of gaining such experience from the industry viewpoint has been well documented, few studies have assessed the benefits and challenges faced by…

While acknowledging that a system of vocational qualifications might be perceived as having any number of possible purposes, this paper identifies three primary functions that any vocational qualification must fulfil by dint of being a vocational qualification. It is argued that current arrangements are unable to fulfil these essential functions…

In the international debate surrounding transitions from school to employment, Japan and Germany are regularly cited as examples of success. This article draws on the Japanese concepts represented by two problematic groups--freeters and NEETs--to demonstrate that over recent years, young people in both countries have also been facing serious…

A common complaint from business and industry is that employees entering the workforce are not "job ready." They often lack the practical skills, maturity, and workplace experience to perform well in their roles, leaving employers to fill the gap by providing training either at their own expense or with public funding. In contrast, a new…

The body of research produced by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) over the lifetime of the 2011-14 National Research Priorities (see figure 1) has exposed many of the problems facing tertiary education and training. With the aim of "understanding the problem", the research has further investigated the…

This report examines the labor market outcomes of high school career and technical education (CTE) students. Using nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), the report analyzes a recent cohort of high school graduates (the class of 2004) as of 2012, eight years after they had completed high school.…

For decades, the popular conception of a college student in this country has been the full-time residential financially dependent student who enrolls in a four-year college immediately after graduating from high school. That student has not been the norm at U.S. postsecondary institutions for more than 30 years. Such students exist but they are…

This paper evaluates a youth internship program in the Republic of Yemen that provided firms with a 50 percent subsidy to hire recent graduates of universities and vocational schools. The first round of the program took place in 2014 and required both firms and youth to apply for the program. The paper examines the demand for such a program, and…

This article explores the effect that the use of e-portfolios initiated and organized by apprenticeship training offices has had on the learning processes and assessment practices of apprentices in Norwegian vocational education and training. Although these intermediate structures have the potential to bridge the gap between work and education,…