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The General National Vocational Qualification (GNVQ) is enjoying growing popularity in the further education (FE) sector in England and Wales. GNVQs have been recently introduced in the Information Technology (IT) vocational area, to augment or replace existing qualifications. These new courses have been piloted (academic year 1994-1995) at several centres, including Hull College. This paper focuses on the Advanced level GNVQ in IT, contrasting it with existing qualifications (A level and National Diploma); reflections on the Hull College experience are also provided. The GNVQ (Advanced) is seen not only as leading directly to employment (like the traditional National Diploma), but also as a route into higher education (HE). Growing numbers of universities now accept the GNVQ as an entry qualification. for the first time, a vocational course is now perceived increasingly as a genuine alternative to the A level. The implications for universities are examined, with predictions as to the likely strengths and weaknesses of different categories of university entrant. The importance of choosing the right HE course, now that university provision has become increasingly diverse in the computing area, is also highlighted. This paper extends and provides full discussion of the preliminary findings introduced at the 3rd Annual Conference on the Teaching of Computing held at Dublin City University in August 1995.

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Business education tends to reinforce the neo-liberal view that the best, perhaps the only desirable model of organization is the managed corporation. Furthermore, in competing to attract students, business schools frequently stress that lucrative careers and personal success can be achieved through management qualifications. All this arguably encourages the competitive and individualistic pursuit of wealth, status and power that reflects the dominant values underpinning much of contemporary western society. Our article suggests an antidote to these developments by proposing the more prominent study of ‘alternative organizations’ within business schools. Alternative organizations pursue very different ends, in different ways from mainstream business corporations, so studying them has the potential to stimulate debate and raise questions about the individualistic and instrumental attitudes implicit in much business education and research. Importantly, the study of alternative organization also suggests a range of possibilities for radically rethinking organization(s) - including business schools - and the place of managers, along with others, within them.

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