Emerging skills and competences: a transatlantic study: EU-US study for the European Commission

This report presents research findings from a transatlantic comparative study on emerging skills and competences. The study contributes to the on-going policy dialogue between the US Department of Education and the European Commission, [Director General] DG Education and Culture on the future strategic direction of education and training systems. More specifically, the study explores approaches adopted to make education and training systems more responsive to emerging skills needs to match future demands in more globalised labour markets. Through exploratory interviews with a range of stakeholders and through a limited number of illustrative case studies, the study has identified a number of promising practices emerging on both sides of the Atlantic. An inventory of European practices of forecasting and anticipation of emerging skills was prepared as part of the study. On both sides of the Atlantic, institutions and industry representatives see key competences and/or 21st century skills as key to employability, regardless choice of study. The discourse on 21st century skills is rooted in debates about the competitiveness of the USA in a global economy, which has gradually become more skills intensive. There are major similarities between 21st century skills and key competences for example regarding the role that industry has played a strong role in promoting broader skills and competences. In the EU, key competences have a dual focus - contributing to employability of the individual and providing the foundation for active citizenship. Key competences as defined in the [European Union] EU are comprehensive, spanning teaching and learning from early age to post-retirement, and irrespective of whether teaching and learning occur within the formal education system, on-the-job, or as part of civic and leisure time activities. The EU policy initiatives on key competences within the overall strategies on lifelong learning have had an accelerating effect on reform agendas in vocational education and in tertiary education in the Member States. In the USA the 21st century skills debates have had a catalytic role in reforms of the K-12 system and in workforce training as part of broader economic development policies in several states, but with noticeable differences from state to state. In Europe, policies pertaining to the agenda on new skills for new jobs are driving reforms of educational systems and institutional practices to an extent, which is not seen in the USA according to several informants. Reasons are that the federal and state governments traditionally have had limited influence on policies pertaining to the tertiary sector, and furthermore that governance mechanisms for the post-secondary education systems are impacted by a strong belief in market forces. All the US stakeholders interviewed stated that they could simply not imagine that policy makers at the federal or the state level would commission a skills anticipation study in order to try and influence the dimensioning or the content of a postsecondary programme due to institutional cultures and governance arrangements deeply rooted in a strong belief in market forces. Reforms in the tertiary sector in the EU have in recent years led to growing institutional autonomy and market orientation though with substantial differences from Member State to Member State. In Europe, the competence based education agenda is generally perceived as enabling innovations in teaching and learning environments. In the USA, there has been a more critical debate among researchers and education practitioners about the underlying philosophy of competence based education. Some of the concerns are that competence-based education is bureaucratic, that it relies excessively on standardisation, and that it masks the quality differences of the various colleges and universities. From the study, a number of themes emerge where the EU-US co-operation on education could provide a unique platform for further analysis and development of innovative approaches pertaining to a 21st century agenda on education and lifelong learning.

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