The Origins and Contemporary Development of Work-Based Higher Education in Germany: Lessons for Anglophone Countries?

Today, higher education is typically seen as offering the most assured pathways to secure careers and low unemployment rates. Yet, increasingly some groups, not least higher education graduates and their families paying ever-higher tuition fees, question the taken-for-granted contributions higher education makes to individuals and society as a whole. Despite decades of mass higher education expansion, even societies with strong systems continue to struggle to achieve their goal of universalizing participation and equalizing access. While in part this is due to limited public or corporate funding for (affordable) study opportunities, differentiated systems, such as in the US, also lack policy coordination and effective governance, providing a surfeit of options. While participation rates have climbed worldwide, higher education systems continue to produce winners (“insiders”) and losers (“outsiders”), even as the “schooled society” shifts the occupational structure upward. Market-oriented higher education systems face increasing privatization, which also involves financializing university governance. Many states have retrenched investments that had once underwritten universities’ flourishing and their moves toward massification. Tensions have deepened over who should pay for rising costs, exacerbated in an era of increasing status competition via higher education. In the face of such challenges globally, which alternatives exist? A prominent possibility, pioneered in Germany in the 1970s, are “dual study” programs offered by several organizational forms, from vocational academies to universities of applied sciences. Such hybrid programs fully integrate phases of higher education study and paid work in firms. Another potential advantage of apprenticeship training being offered in conjunction with higher education is that this would boost the reputation of apprenticeships overall. The German experience indicates that the attractiveness of the apprenticeship training system as a whole can be bolstered when it offers a viable pathway also for those individuals with a traditional university entrance certificate. If these students seriously consider and choose advanced work-based higher education, this may well increase the standing of apprenticeship training among students, their families, and employers. Thus, dual study programs provide an innovative model for policymaking and implementation. Especially when considering strategies to improve skill formation overall, to reduce the costs individuals must bear in attaining higher education, and to improve the fit between the expectations of employers and potential employees regarding skill formation, dual study programs excel. The origins and contemporary developments in work-based higher education in Germany offer lessons and inspiration for Anglophone countries, with their strong and differentiated higher education systems, to further bolster study programs coordinated with firms.