Abstract
The education gospel, both in the United States and in other countries, calls for increasing levels of education and orienting schools and colleges around preparation for occupations. In the United States this has led to vocationalizing the university as well as other levels of schooling. This trend over more than a century has made the American university the primary avenue for individual mobility and a crucial source of research for national and regional growth. However, these changes have also created several dilemmas for the professionalized university including the demise of liberal or general education, a number of critiques of professional education, utilitarian and narrow conceptions of education among students, the dangers of overeducation, and serious equity effects. The result is that, even though everyone wants access to the American university, no one is satisfied with it. The chapter also explores the history of American and German borrowing from one another. These have often been based on mistaken assumptions about the other country’s practices, and some current German reforms seem likely to follow this pattern.
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- 1.
We use the English term vocations in the sense of careers or callings rather than mere jobs, employment that provides personal meaning, economic benefits, continued development over the life course, social status and connections to the greater society. The German term Beruf is closer to our intended meaning, and Berufsbildung is a more comprehensive way to describe preparation for employment in its fullest sense.
- 2.
Digest of Educational Statistics (2001, tables 172–173, pp. 206–207).
- 3.
See Brint, Riddle, Turk-Bicakci, and Levy (2002, table 1). On the reasons that these are underestimates, see p. 7.
- 4.
Dunham (1969, p. 28) provides a useful table showing the origins of state colleges and universities: 59% originated as teachers’ colleges, 14% as technical or agricultural colleges, 10% as multipurpose colleges, 8% as junior colleges, 6% as academies, and 3% as religious or YMCA institutions.
- 5.
This section draws on Grubb and Lazerson (2004, pp. 74–77); see this source for the many citations to commission and reform reports related to the different professions.
- 6.
John Dewey has been widely misunderstood on this point. He called for integrating classroom-based “knowing” and experience-based “doing”—“learning and doing,” not “learning by doing.” As he wrote, “Learning by doing does not, of course, mean the substitution of manual occupations or handwork for textbook studying” (Dewey & Dewey, 1915, p. 74).
- 7.
See Daly, Büchel, and Duncan (2000, table 1); the review in Hartog (2000), especially Tables 1 and 2; and the special issue of Economics of Education Review on overeducation, Vol. 19 (2000). Most of the public debate in Germany has focused on the undereducation of its young people, with too many leaving school before receiving their diplomas and not receiving adequate preparation in technological competences.
- 8.
See the review of signaling by Riley (1979), especially Section 5.1 on educational screening.
- 9.
Germany, like most European countries, is in the process of shifting to three-year bachelor degrees and away from its tradition of professionally oriented diplomas. The outcome of this shift in terms of professional preparation is unclear, though there are substantial complaints that the B.A. is of insufficient worth in the labor market.
- 10.
- 11.
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Tobias Schulze-Cleven, Esther Winter, and an anonymous referee made helpful comments on an earlier draft.
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Grubb, W.N., Lazerson, M. (2012). The Education Gospel and Vocationalism in US Higher Education: Triumphs, Tribulations, and Cautions for Other Countries. In: Barabasch, A., Rauner, F. (eds) Work and Education in America. Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2272-9_6
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