This study questions the proposition that undertaking vocational education and training (VET) enhances the likelihood of getting a job. The research opines that the perceived impact of VET in the employment decision is ideological and based on circumstantial evidence not measurable in the absence of specifically focused, large scale, longitudinal research. The research contends that unemployment, and the role of education and training in reducing unemployment, intersect in a highly politicised and manipulated environment lacking the necessary data and research to inform public policy and that
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This study questions the proposition that undertaking vocational education and training (VET) enhances the likelihood of getting a job. The research opines that the perceived impact of VET in the employment decision is ideological and based on circumstantial evidence not measurable in the absence of specifically focused, large scale, longitudinal research. The research contends that unemployment, and the role of education and training in reducing unemployment, intersect in a highly politicised and manipulated environment lacking the necessary data and research to inform public policy and that this environment has spawned a new class system in Australia - 'Employability'.
The research states that, in Australia, too many individuals and employers exhibit little regard for the value of education and training preferring experience and attitude, whilst the government makes little effort to instil a desire for life long learning engaging instead in denigration of the unemployed and shaping of public perception whilst frustrating independent analysis of its claims for success in dealing with this social enigma. Work, according to this researcher, has been elevated to the point of becoming a religion and humanity is now valued by business, and government, solely for its 'employability' in an act of faith policy set that allocates education and training to a role subordinate to, and supporting of, employability. Decisions on the value of education are left up to individual choice in a narrowly focused set of policies shackled by economic overtones and a failure to promote life long learning.
The research locates these, and other assertions, in a conceptual framework that explores the intersecting themes of society, economics, politics, education and training, through hermeneutical interrogation of empirical, theoretical and philosophical research using content, thematic and materialist semiotic analysis within an ethnographic - inductive design.
The study surfaces the proposition that research and balanced economic and social evaluation techniques, together with a sophisticated debate and a set of values and policy of life long learning, does not shape public policy and action. Instead, the drivers are primarily narrow ideologies, acts of faith, unproven assumptions and the objectives of politics and capital. The researcher ultimately concludes that the decision to employ is more influenced by the external complex interactions of agency, practice and social structure and the singular conditions of interview.
Published abstract.
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