Vocational Education and Training for a Global Economy: Lessons from Four Countries

Vocational Education and Training for a Global Economy investigates the greatly varying ways in which four countries—Singapore, Switzerland, China, and the United States—prepare young people for the twenty-first-century workplace. The book looks first at the highly successful vocational education and training (VET) systems in Singapore and Switzerland, describing them in revealing detail and accounting for the assumptions and social arrangements that account for their unique features. It then turns to the two largest—and arguably the most dynamic—nations in the world, China and the United States, and examines the differing conditions, goals, and arrangements that have affected their respective programs for preparing their citizens for present and future work.
 
At a time when a highly competitive global economy is prompting profound changes in the workplace and in the skills required for professional success, all countries feel a heightened sense of urgency in finding ways to guide and prepare young people for work. As this book makes clear, however, the resulting preparatory systems within these four countries differ dramatically—and for a wide range of economic, cultural, and political reasons.
 
A detailed and incisive look at VET systems in the United States and abroad, Vocational Education and Training for a Global Economy will be indispensable reading for all who are concerned with preparing youth for today’s competitive and demanding modern workplace.

Marc S. Tucker is the founder, former CEO and president, and, currently, a senior fellow at the National Center on Education and the Economy. A leader of the standards-driven education reform movement, Tucker has been studying the strategies used by the countries with the most successful education systems for three decades. He created New Standards, a precursor to the Common Core; the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards; and the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce and its successor, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. He also created the National Institute for School Leadership and was instrumental in creating the National Skill Standards Board.

Tucker authored the 1986 Carnegie Report, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, coauthored the report of the Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages, and was lead author of Tough Choices or Tough Times, the report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce. Tucker has coauthored or edited numerous books, including Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth of Nations (Basic Books, 1992); Standards for Our Schools: How to Set Them, Measure Them, and Reach Them (Jossey-Bass, 1998); The Principal Challenge: Leading and Managing Schools in an Era of Accountability (Jossey-Bass, 2002); and Surpassing Shanghai: An Agenda for American Education Built on the World’s Leading Systems (Harvard Education Press, 2011).

In 1994 Tucker was commended by President Bill Clinton for his contributions to the design of the Clinton administration’s education and job training proposals in the Rose Garden ceremony celebrating the passage of the legislation authorizing the program. In 2014 he was awarded the James Bryant Conant award by the Education Commission of the States for his outstanding individual contribution to American education.