Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to vocational and professional training to the International Congress on Vocational and Professional Training in Zurich, Switzerland.
Encouraging more partnership between businesses and educational institutions, DeVos noted that the U.S. would be wise to draw upon the Swiss model for vocational education and apprenticeships.
“It is interesting that more than two-thirds of current students pursue their education through apprenticeships,” DeVos said about the Swiss system. “Apprenticeships here include many options in every sector of the economy, including healthcare, finance, and law.”
She contrasted the American system of vocational education and apprenticeships — which focuses mostly on blue-collar professions such as welders and carpenters — with the Swiss model, which includes a wide variety of white-collar careers.
The Swiss approach also solves a problem that U.S. corporations are finding when they hire college graduates: that the credential of a degree signals employability, but not that individuals necessarily have the skills needed for the job they are hired to perform.
DeVos noted that in Switzerland, “employers and educators work hand-in-hand to line up the skills required with those actually learned. It’s a bottom-up, self-defined solution. And it’s a solution we must better emulate in my country.”
Some corporations, such as IBM, are already taking this approach in the U.S., recognizing the need to educate differently for 21st century jobs. They created an educational and apprenticeship program specifically to meet the needs of their workplace, citing a mismatch between student skills and job requirements.
With the Trump administration’s support, perhaps more U.S. corporations and educational institutions will work to do the same.
Correction: An earlier headline referenced Scandinavia instead of Switzerland.
