A degree of vocational education

The recent OECD report, Education at a Glance 2010, has been seized upon by the media to claim that Britain’s excellence in education is falling. The UK’s decline in graduation numbers – from joint third OECD wide in 2000 to 15^th by 2008 – has been used to suggest the country is losing its competitive advantage. However, it is misleading to value higher education in terms of quantity rather than quality and the Government should seek to promote more vocational qualifications instead of pseudo-degrees.

To take the OECD stats without examining the societies behind them is wrong. The report suggests that Finland has the highest graduation rate of all OECD nations (63%), but the Finnish tertiary level education system is so different to ours that comparison is useless, except for those wishing to indulge in a little schadenfreude. In Finland, those graduating from polytechnics with vocational qualifications are counted as graduates, so the rate is unsurprisingly almost twice as high as in Britain where only those with degrees are included.

Such differences in education systems exist between all countries to a greater or lesser extent, and so a comparison can reveal very little – it doesn’t tell us where Britain is doing well or what needs improving. The stats are all complied from many different forms of national tertiary education and the final figure is simply an average of averages, which is of little use.

Rather than become preoccupied with number crunching and unhelpful comparisons to other countries , the Government should reassess the purpose of higher education: it will find that there is still a lot to be said for rigorous vocational courses that should not be taught in an academic style and therefore not labelled degrees. This shouldn’t be a controversial issue, as academic qualifications are not inherently superior to vocational ones. However, the media outcry over the OECD stats, along with government rhetoric in general, combines to display a very different picture.

The 2010 Dyson Report emphasised the need for increased university graduates in scientific and technical degrees, but made little mention of any vocational qualifications. The implicit argument in most of British society is that being a graduate is important, no matter what subject it’s in; a symptom perhaps of the preoccupation with the ‘knowledge economy’. The EU’s Europe 2020 strategy that the UK has agreed to, is partly to blame as it demands ‘at least 40% of the younger generation should have a tertiary degree’.[1] As stated above, different countries have unique ideas about what counts as a ‘tertiary degree’, making pan-European assessment difficult.

Britain should not be afraid of valuing its Level 4 vocation qualifications as part of its contribution to the Europe 2020 target – despite the fact they do not result in BAs and MAs – because it is the content of the course and valuable skills learnt from them that really count, not the abbreviation after a name. This argument in no way devalues or diminishes the ethos of admiration for graduates, but there is a definite requirement to raise the respect for vocational courses.

It is in the Government’s interest to increase the status of vocational courses, as the public benefit of someone taking a such a course and contributing to the economy immediately (and even during their training) is greater than that of someone delaying their earnings (and tax revenue) for a degree that has no direct relevance to their eventual employment. It is equally a growing problem that many assume that employment is only possible through gaining a degree and with this in mind, increasing numbers are attending university without really wanting to.

The systematic criticism of vocational courses has been going on for decades and has had a long-term effect on how industry is regarded. The Apprenticeship scheme has been half-hearted, offering far fewer places than there are applicants. Recently, BT received 24,000 applications for 221 positions. There is clearly demand for vocational courses, but the same enthusiasm is not met by the state. From 2003 to 2009, engineering, manufacturing and technology based apprenticeships increased only by 3,900 places from 33,100 to 37,000.[2] With little choice available, most prospective apprentices are forced to go to university if they wish to pursue higher education, but this can never offer the same practical skills as a vocational course.

Clearly, a vocational qualification is on a different level of academic rigour to a Russell Group degree, but currently there is an institutional habit of frowning on the practical, or attempting to make it appear as something it is not by labelling it a ‘degree’ and removing the most important ‘hands-on’ learning. Neither of these changes are helpful to the prospective student or the eventual employer, as they devalue the worth of the subject. The Government needs to recognise the huge demand for an alternative to university-based study and see degrees and vocational courses only in their own terms, as very different but equally worthy paths to follow.