Vocational education and training - VET

It is valuable to consider a richer framework for analyzing how recent changes in the earnings and employment distribution in the United States and other advanced economies are shaped by the interactions among worker skills, job tasks, evolving technologies, and shifting trading opportunities. We propose a tractable task-based model in which the assignment of skills to tasks is endogenous and technical change may involve the substitution of machines for certain tasks previously performed by labor. We further consider how the evolution of technology in this task-based setting may be endogenized. We show how such a framework can be used to interpret several central recent trends, and we also suggest further directions for empirical exploration.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16082.pdf?new_window=1

The Southeast Asian region has experienced some of the highest growth rates in the world, with investments in skills playing a significant role in helping national economies to adjust to changes in working practices, advances in technology, and challenges associated with globalisation. In some countries this process has been more successfully managed and significant advances have been achieved in growth rates and employment levels, but in others it has resulted in stagnation of economic sectors, underemployment, rising unemployment levels and social exclusion for large sections of society.

The tertiary education system in Canada performs well in fostering a skilled workforce with generally good labour-market outcomes and is internationally recognised for its research contributions. Tertiary educational attainment is high, but participation rates will need to continue expanding to maintain the supply of highly skilled labour as the population ages and the needs of the knowledge-based economy rapidly evolve.
The development of skills for innovation can be improved by increasing the integration of technical, business and communications skills training with practical industry experience within tertiary education programmes. In an environment of government spending restraint, the quality of tertiary education could be strengthened by increasing the distinction between institutions that target research and those that emphasise teaching and re-evaluating tuition policies in provinces where public finances are stretched.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5k92pghq4247-en

The relationship between education spending and outcomes has been poorly documented at the tertiary level, despite rising expenditures at this level. This paper explores the impact of various measures of spending on a range of outcomes of tertiary education, using cross-country comparisons. It finds that public expenditures are only loosely linked with outcomes in terms of access and participation, but that they are also positively associated with proxies of quality.
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/03/22/000386194_20120322022533/Rendered/PDF/676180NWP0Boc367885B00PUBLIC00Final053.pdf

This paper considers the influence of taxes on the financial incentive to invest in human capital and explores the tax treatment of private investment by individuals and employers in post-compulsory education and lifelong learning in 31 OECD countries, India and South Africa. The paper describes targeted personal, corporate and value added tax measures related to education and training and analyses them in terms of their impacts on the incentive to acquire skills and their distributional effects. The desirability of different forms of tax relief for skills formation is examined from the point of view of efficiency, equity and administrative simplicity within the broader context of fiscal policy and the role of government in skills formation beyond compulsory education.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5k92sn0qv5mp.pdf?expires=1364767101&id;=id&accname;=guest&checksum;=B6EE80A4E3E7BD5BF3BA54C6BE107C74

Using a specific micro-dataset with information on working histories, we analyse the labour market entry of Spanish youths who have completed vocational education. According to the education system, young people can enter the labour market with vocational high school (upper secondary education) or with vocational college (tertiary education). Both present a period of workplace training, although, as they belong two distinct schooling levels, they have different entry requirements.

The paper suggests that although the earnings gap between tradespeople and college graduates remains large, it would not be surprising to see the gap in rates of return close or even reverse once the earnings made by apprenticeships during their training is taken to account compared to the debt taken on by those who choose to pursue a college degree. 
It may well be that once all costs and benefits – training costs/wages and future earnings – are taken into consideration, that an apprenticeship accreditation is as financially attractive an option as the pursuit of a college degree.

This study examines the labor market outcomes of graduates from training institutes run by Punjab Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA), the largest technical and vocational education and training provider in the province of Punjab, Pakistan. The study uses an SMS-based survey - a promising and inexpensive method to assess the impact of education and training in developing countries.
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2012/03/12/000333037_20120312235511/Rendered/PDF/674320NWP00PUB0Box367872B0Report052.pdf