Question

Read these instructions carefully, and then read the text “The Highs and Lows of Vocational
Education” on the next page. Then write an essay of 350-400 words* in response to this essay title:

You must support your ideas with:
- Evidence taken from the ‘The Highs and Lows of Vocational Education” reading text (at
least one item, which must be referenced with an in-text citation)
AND
- Other evidence regarding either Hong Kong OR China (which you may have read and can
reference correctly, or which you have made up and should be referenced with your family
name and the current year, e.g. (Fan, 2019). You are not required to write a reference list.

Describe the advantages and disadvantages of studying vocational education, in either Hong

Kong or China, and in another country.

The Highs and Lows of Vocational Education [adapted]

by Matt Barnum (2017)
What’s one education topic that right wing, left wing, and all politicians support? It is vocational
training - something they’ve all said America needs in order to create a balance of practical as well
as academic school leavers. While President Trump praised Germany’s approach to vocational
education recently, he actually plans to reduce funding for it, but, at least in theory, there’s wide
support for helping more students learn career-specific skills.
Yet new international research points to a significant downside of such programs: Students may
benefit early in their careers, but are harmed later in life as the economy changes and they lack the
less specific skills necessary to adapt. The study raises concerns about the positive and negative
effects of expanding vocational training in the United States. “Individuals with general education
initially face worse employment outcomes, but with improved experience as they become older,
they have increased employment opportunities, relative to individuals with vocational education,”
write four researchers in the study.
Many European and developing countries provide extensive vocational training, including
apprenticeships with involvement from industry, the authors note. That stands in contrast with the
U.S., which has reduced or eliminated separate vocational tracks in most high schools. Looking at
11 European countries, the researchers compared students within the same country who went on the
vocational track to similar students who went through a general-education program. The result is
that although vocational students make higher salaries and are more likely to be employed as young
adults, this advantage fades over time; by their late forties, those who went through a general
education program have higher employment rates. Those findings were confirmed with more
detailed data from Germany. “The advantages of vocational training in smoothing entry into the
labor market have to be set against disadvantages later in life,” the study concludes.
At age 10, Germany requires students to choose a vocational high school, academic high school, or
what one article described as “something in between.” Students have frequent opportunities to move
between these choices as they progress with their studies. However, in the U.S., vocation-focused
courses are often just a small part of a student’s course load. As of 2009, the average American
student took 3.6 vocational classes in high school.
The authors of the latest research say the findings don’t imply that vocational education is
necessarily a bad idea, just that it is important to understand the advantages and disadvantages of
each choice. The results also suggest that policymakers looking only at the short-term impacts of
such programs may not be getting an accurate understanding of their effects. One recent study of
Arkansas’s high-school vocational program, which requires students to take six career-focused
classes in high school in order to graduate and allows them to concentrate in specific areas, found
that participants had higher earnings and employment rates as young adults. Longer-run impacts
were not examined, however.

Answer 1

Apprenticeships provide valuable opportunities for on the job learning and gaining experience. Switzerland, for example, which has one of Europe's lowest youth unemployment rates, has a long history of combining classroom learning with on the job experience and two third of the students opt for such vocational training. Apprenticeship system or vocational training works well for the Swiss, an affluent country with a labor market the World Economic Forum described last year as "the best functioning globally".

However, apprenticeships are not viewed so positively everywhere in the World. Both the UK and the US, for example, place more emphasis on education than vocation. The Chinese, on the other hand have a long history of apprenticeships.

The advantages of studying a Vocational Education are as follows:

• Experience: the moment you will begun the training you will get hands on the training , which will help you get ahead of all those university graduates because you will be knowing the practicality of work with the academic knowledge.
• Mentoring: you will be working under a senior from whom you will learn many things, you can ask queries moreover you will learn how to develop positive relationships at work.
• Finances: you will be paid a salary from day one, rather than accumulating considerable student debt over the course of degree.
• Boost confidence: on completing the vocational education and working as apprentice you will be more confident than those you have only academic knowledge and also the practical experience of the industry which will be understood by the individual.

The disadvantages of vocational education are as follows:

• options: the vocational education and apprenticeship is not going to get you into every career, a degree is still essential for certain careers, particularly in areas of medicine and science.
• Social Life: you would not be able to get the experience of university life and all that it entails which, aside from the stress of exams and essays, is often much easier than the daily work grind.
• Snobbishness: Some people will assume your grades were not good enough to get into university and you had no choice but vocational education.