Vocational education and training: The recipe for success that is being thrown away because education politicians do not understand the labor market
Today, the Swedish Agency for Higher Vocational Education (YH-myndigheten) announced which courses will receive funding to start in the fall of 2015. Compared to other areas, Computer Science/IT courses have done relatively well. Nevertheless, like the authority itself, we can see that many programs that both meet the quality requirements and are in high demand by employers are rejected, for purely resource reasons. Fussy, to borrow Astrid Lindgren's expression.
In the last ten years, higher education and its predecessor, vocational education and training (VET), have become a great success on the labor market. Without the government really understanding it, they have landed in a successful formula where employers get their needs for qualified professional skills met while the state contributes to growth and employment in a flexible and cyclical way.
The big problem is that the government has not really understood this, but continues to skimp on funds. The budget for vocational education and training is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, and my interpretation - which I would like to see challenged - is that education politicians neither know nor are particularly interested in how the labor market works. Education politicians are programmed to work either with the internal development of secondary schools, without any real incentives for interaction with the world of work, despite the fair talk to the contrary, or with the internal development of academic universities, without - that's right - real incentives for interaction with the world of work, despite the fair talk to the contrary.
Vocational education and training for adults, including both higher education and vocational education and training, is simply being squeezed. Politicians are groping for ways and means to increase employment and employers are crying out for skilled people, but as a result of both organizational and mental blockages, a given solution to both these problems is being squandered.
What can you wish for? Apart from, of course, replacing all politicians and officials at the Ministry of Education with a fear of the labor market (e.g. through staff rotation with the Ministry of Enterprise), one idea is to change the name to the Ministry of Skills, and to lift selected parts (not least the budget) from the Ministry of Labor. Let it escape responsibility for the Employment Service, however.
For more wise ideas on the problem of undersized universities of applied sciences, read the commentary by Mia Liljestrand of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.