Vo-Tech

Vocational/Technical - e.g. schools (esp High School) focused on preparing students (Educating Kids) for a job (Making A Living), rather than a College Education.

Though the term usually isn't used that way, it also applies to many Community College programs (Job Training), and even full colleges (Career-Ready).

Educating Kids In NYC bits

• About 110,000 students in the city's public high schools are enrolled in vocational education classes. That is about 38 percent of all high school students, down from 58 percent in 1990. Most take courses in general education high schools. But almost 28,000 are enrolled in the city's 22 public high schools that focus on what is now called career and technical education (CTE).

• CTE site http://www.nyccte.org/nycctenew/

• list of schools/programs

• Today's career education faces a challenge that never confronted the old-fashioned vocational education programs of the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time that they help students learn a career, the schools must give students the academic background they need to pass the five Regents exams now required for graduation in New York State... The interest in career education springs from a reality sometimes ignored in the drive for higher standards: Academic high schools do not meet the needs of thousands of students who leave the school system unprepared for either work or higher education... These vocationally-oriented schools should not be confused with the theme-based Small School-s that the city has launched in the past few years, schools with themes that range from law to sports management to firefighting. The difference is that those small schools aim to pique students' interest in school, and perhaps whet their appetite for further course work in the area; most of them do not offer specific career training and certification.

Switzerland debate - Despite all of the reforms, introduced over the last few years, the challenge for the Swiss vocational education is quite obvious: the ApprenticeShip market is in a crisis. There are simply not enough apprenticeship places being offered... Most policy makers and researchers are (as in Germany ) optimistic about the future. They believe that like every market the apprenticeships have their ups and downs but in the long run the market will reach anew equilibrium of supply and demand at perhaps a slightly reduced level. Others, however, are quite sceptical that it is possible to maintain in the current industrial world and in a knowledge economy this model of two or three places of learning. Qualifications - they argue - are changing so quickly that it is not possible to provide them thoroughly apprenticeship-schemes. So general education is the best way to prepare for future labour market demands.