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This book analyzes vocational education and training (VET) systems in seven advanced industrial countries (AICs) to determine institutional arrangements for skills creation most promising in attaining the learning society. The AICs are France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, and Sweden. Chapter 1 discusses special problems of VET that become an example of something far more general among contemporary AICs: the problems confronted increasingly require collective solutions, but the core biases of political and economic action increasingly reject collective action. Each AIC is then located within the concept of a skill equilibrium and within a labor market concept. Chapter 2 examines VET and labor market participation trends. Chapter 3 considers changing patterns of participation in international trade. Chapter 4 explores the practical potential for government action in skill creation in the two most effective exemplars of detailed direct state-led systems--France and Sweden--and in Italy and the United Kingdom, which have weak past records. Chapter 5 focuses on German corporatist intermediary organizations that move between individual firms and the public policy arena, providing a collective goods component while remaining within the business community. Chapter 6 considers the role of informal networks for skill creation in Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Chapter 7 discusses reliance on capabilities of the firm, with some encouragement from government, as the best approach to construction of a knowledge society. Chapter 8 draws conclusions and policy implications. The book contains 372 references and an index. (YLB)

This book examines how the Japanese learn to work by exploring the following topics: common assumptions about vocational education and training (VET) that Japan brings into question; Japan's general education system and the moral quality and prestige status of the teaching and learning process; screening processes within Japan's education system and different attitudes toward vocational education in rural and urban areas; vocational streams in the mainline formal education system (the secondary level, specializations, technical high schools, teaching and assessment of practical subjects, commercial high schools, formal qualifications, colleges of technology, junior colleges, universities, university-industry liaison, overall standards); postsecondary, nonuniversity VET (Ministry of Labour system, Ministry of Health nursing schools, central and local government provision, private training schools, placement of graduates, public assistance); training in enterprises (lifetime employment and training, off-the-job lecture courses, nonformal in-firm training, correspondence courses, enterprise-operated qualification systems); standards and qualifications (skill testing, skill testing bodies, qualification examinations run by the central government, nonofficial qualifications); public expenditure on VET (budgets and priorities); and policies and prospects (policy coordination, consultation and research, recent trends). The book contains 91 references and 32 tables/figures. Appended is the 1994 Ministry of Education budget of vocational education. (MN)