Introduction: the debate on the dual system of vocational training

In his study, Green (2001) characterised Germany as a ‘high-skills society’ with national competitiveness primarily based on high productivity in manufacturing a wide range of high-quality goods, relying predominantly on scientific elites and on high-quality intermediate skills. The system of skill formation that serves the “‘high skills society’ generates wide skills distribution and high levels of social trust, and produces high incomes and relatively high wage equality” (Green, 2001, pp 67-89, 142).

At the heart of the German model of skill formation lies the dual system of vocational education and training (VET). Comparativists have extensively discussed this system for some decades now. The main reasons for the prolonged foreign interest in the dual system are the constantly high participation rates (it prepares about two thirds of German youth for working life), and the comparatively low youth unemployment rates associated with it (the system provides a comparatively smooth transition of young people from initial training to continuous employment). In fact, the German Economic Institute (Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft) has pointed out that the dual system has produced “harmonious results” on the training market recently, balancing supply and demand for training places (IDW, 2002, p 2).

However, there are increasingly clear indications that the German model of the high-skills society, and with it the dual system, is at risk (see Culpepper, 1999, pp 44-8; Green, 2001, pp 148-51). In fact, the reoccurring discussions surrounding the ‘crisis of the dual system’ in the inner-German debate of academics and researchers are almost as old as the system itself (Wüstenbecker, 1997, pp 14-19; Greinert, 1998, pp 93-102; Baethge, 1999, pp 127-36). The future prospects of the system are the subject of great controversy (cf Wilson, 1997, p 437; Deissinger, 2001b; Greinert, 2001). Irrespective of the position one supports in this debate, the need to modernise the dual system seems widely acknowledged by researchers and educationists.

In this situation – signs of crisis and the acknowledged need for modernisation – it seems surprising that the decision makers have found it very hard to initiate reforms of the training system.