In presenting a European perspective on SMEs, this chapter takes a less complex approach because it addresses only training in SMEs and not economic development. It also focuses on the experience of one particular member state in the European Union: Germany. Since one of the overarching issues in Germany is the relationship between the German system of initial vocational preparation and the content and methods of training employed by the SMEs, the chapter adopts a structural approach. Is the level of competency attained adequate for the needs of SMEs; and, just as important, does it meet the expectations of young people?
The principles inherited by the Dual System are much older than 25 years. They are deeply rooted in the traditional apprenticeship of the crafts. Its main feature has always been the connection between learning and working. So, with respect to the topic of training and the SMEs, there is a tradition in Germany that gives SMEs the opportunity to bring learning and working together to be a learning enterprise in the sense that Robert Poczik mentions in his chapter.
Industry adopted the apprenticeship system of the crafts, which Germany still maintains today. But as industry's needs evolved, there was a reduction in learning-in-the-working process, and an introduction of a systematic VET in training workshops. A training workshop of an industrial company is an independently organized unit removed from the normal work context. Its purpose is to convey the knowledge and skills necessary for the respective training occupation.
VET is viewed as a process governed by rules, an approach that can transfer the necessary skills as long as the teaching and learning process is planned in detail, efficiently run, and closely monitored. This traditional industrial form of vocational training customarily formulates corresponding teaching goals based on operationalized qualification requirements.
Meanwhile, it has also become common practice in the crafts to take the training out of the normal work context for a period of time, and to organize it in intercompany training centers. There, trainees are introduced to the particular skills required by current training regulations which cannot be provided by every company. In addition, the intercompany training centers currently undertake important further training tasks such as training the trainers of SMEs.1
German unification challenged the Dual System to integrate a VET system which was based on a big company-structured state economy with only four to five thousand training facilities. This economic structure faded away after the unification in favor of an SME-structured market economy with perhaps 130,000 to 170,000 companies, which must be prepared to train. Additionally, a decision was made, in principle, to change from a two-year training system toward a three-year Dual System.
A consequence of this transition process has been that the newly emerging SMEs of Eastern Germany are not able to provide a sufficient supply of training places. To bridge this deficit, the federal government and the individual states recently decided to fund 12,000 additional noncompany training places. Naturally, there is a danger in this action. The Dual System might suffer insofar as companies, which are generally willing to train, may be kept from that training by the program itself. The key question is whether the program will create a structure that develops its own life.
Work is being done to order for an individual customer. Most of these companies are customer-oriented, from the beginning to the end of the work task. This "order and customer-related" work is seen as the distinctive characteristic of crafts and SMEs. There are some important aspects of this kind of work:
That traditional approach to training has two grave consequences for SMEs. First, the closed didactic concepts in this type of course are in direct opposition to the relatively open work procedures of SMEs. This type of pedagogy is therefore not able to instill in the student the ability to act. Secondly, the existing nature of provision is often used by the crafts as an argument to shift training away from an in-company provision toward intercompany courses. This leads to a reduction of responsibility for training by the companies and can shortchange the training needs of SMEs.
The concept of production has three essentials:
The graduates of the Dual System are experts in production and the production process. They can take up work in companies with relatively little difficulty, and the companies themselves appear to have an expert-model of organization. The organization of work procedures can be limited to arranging the necessary tasks for the production process so that the resulting work can be done by persons with the customary subject-specific qualifications. The company can rely on these workers to carry out all aspects of their tasks according to the technical standards belonging to their trades. These assumptions about production are embedded in the training regulations of the 1980s. These regulations decreed that learners should be capable of occupational activity that could be examined and lead to the attainment of qualifications. These occupational skills include autonomous planning, execution, and control.
This prevailing concept of production has had a strong influence on the development of qualification concepts, which are regarded as the principal means of producing the necessary skills for the production process. Vocational training concentrates on the production equipment to be handled, the sequence of the production process, and the products to be manufactured.
Gradually, attention has been moving beyond this production paradigm to encompass new organizational concepts of work. It is focusing on the reality that work in companies is by no means always an ordered activity akin to a production process. There is a growing awareness that each company always has activities that do not lend themselves either to planning or regulation. Unlike those processes that can be planned, these situation-oriented activities must be carried out in a climate of uncertainty regarding their possible consequences.
The Dual System has to recognize this changing understanding of work. Considerable effort must be invested in changing VET so that it can help develop the trainees' ability to cope with manifold practical situations. It has to reflect the changes in work organization: the decentralization of decisionmaking and responsibility, reductions in hierarchical structure, and more organizational learning. It must also prepare students for broader tasks beyond the specific subjects of the production process such as "cost thinking," customer orientation, communication, cooperation, and, in particular, entrepreneurship within the company.
Big industry has led the development of modern VET in Germany in this century, and it has shown an understanding of the message from the most recent economic crises as well. It is beginning to adapt its VET in content, methods, and organization to the change in work organization--changes which have been underway for some years. The actions of large firms may give the necessary push to the SMEs to base their training on their original understanding of work, and to draw their attention to the new training needs of the evolving workplace.
Industrial companies in Germany have been suffering from the biggest crisis since World War II, and, in aggregate, have reduced the number of training places significantly: by ten percent, for example, in 1993. (In overall numbers, the 1993 cuts in training places totaled about 50,000.) Some sectors were particularly hard hit: Industrial companies in the metal working and electrotechnical occupations reduced their training places by 50 percent from 1991 to 1993 (Berufsbildungsbericht 1994, 1994).
On the other hand, these companies are still committed to VET and are looking for cost-effective alternatives to their expensive training. The latest research results from the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, and from industry itself, suggest that training is still very much in industry's economic self-interest. The research disproves the argument that it costs more to do in-company industrial training than it returns in benefits. Initial training in Germany is an investment in the future of the industrial company and the industry as a whole.
The principal problem with the costs of training is not its absolute level, however. Rather, it is the level of the comparative cost advantages. To be feasible, VET must be profitable in the short run, and not just in the long term. Given industry's short-term cost concerns, then, the dual combination of training and working in the workplace could become a dominant learning concept in industries, too, just as it has established itself in the traditional in-company training in the crafts.
There has also been a dramatic increase in the need for competencies in technology, which go beyond the area of specialized competency. Employees must now be capable of having control of the whole task order--from the quote to the final inspection. They must possess the necessary technical and functional knowledge and an understanding of the shaping of technical systems. They must also know how to select the right technique, grasp the technical contexts in which the work takes place, and be able to systematically isolate faults and remove them from the process.
But does the existing system for certifying occupational performance competency, which results in a trainee who can take certain measures to achieve a defined goal, correspond to the current qualification needs of SMEs? If the SMEs continue to face the challenges of customer-oriented markets, the increasing trend to individualization, and ecological awareness in their work processes, there will be a worsening mismatch. SMEs need employees with a degree of competency not limited to technology, who can deal with changing situations. Such a situation-oriented ability to act has the following key aspects:
The definite losers are the graduates of the Hauptschule, especially the girls. Up to fifteen percent of an age cohort, about 100,000 to 150,000 young people, cannot get initial education and training. The general qualifications pupils who enter the Hauptschule may have difficulty obtaining an apprenticeship-contract from companies. Germany must be careful to avoid a situation where, on the one hand, the graduates of the Gymnasium can make their career without the Dual System and, on the other hand, the graduates of the Hauptschule cannot get into the Dual System despite the existence of training vacancies.
For the graduates of the Gymnasium, there are two avenues of preparation for subsequent vocational work in the area of industrial production. They can train as a skilled worker through the Dual System or they can study as a technician or engineer in the specialized colleges of higher education. Since technical and engineering degrees promise greater privilege to the individual, there is a marked trend toward obtaining such degrees. In addition, the more elevated educational establishments appear more attractive to young people, and this constitutes a threat to the appeal of the Dual System.
The low prospects of the leavers of the Dual System represent another challenge. Currently, only half of those who passed an examination can enter into a permanent contract of employment with their companies. One of six are being made redundant, and some additional trainees, who passed an examination, leave their company and attend school again. In 1993, more than 50,000 young people, who had entered higher education and passed an examination within the Dual System, embarked on university study.
Attempts to raise the Dual System's status face a significant structural obstacle: The great social and educational advantage of the Dual System, namely open access to trained vocations, will be wasted unless three challenges are addressed. First, the Hauptschule should be reformed, so that pupils can get the qualifications that are badly needed as prerequisites for a modern VET. Second, there should be a reform of the part-time vocational school within the Dual System. It should become a school for young adults with a differentiated and well-integrated provision of vocational courses. Third, the quality of VET should be improved, especially in SMEs, so that their second-rate image disperses gradually and legitimately.
In Germany, the Dual System is still focused on initial VET, and not on further VET. The latter is not based on the principles of subsidiarity, social dialogue, and consensus, but, rather, it is left to market forces of supply and demand. Therefore, further VET has always been a sticking point in the relations between employers' organizations and unions.
In recent years, further VET in Germany has been gaining in public interest for two reasons: (1) it is part of the current discussion about the equivalence of general and vocational education, and (2) it has been a focus of VET policy in the European Community.
Against that backdrop, the current discussion strives to place further VET on center stage by giving it a central role in the original VET system, which conveys equivalent qualifications and career prospects. The central proposition is that VET becomes attractive only when it has its very own educational and vocational contents regarding professional and career prospects. Therefore, VET has to exist independently, next to general education and traditional higher education. Three things are necessary to achieve that outcome: (1) in-company career prospects should be linked to further VET, (2) training regulations should be developed in those fields of further VET that are important for a modern economy, and (3) the different components of VET should be smoothly integrated. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training has made a proposal to link initial and further VET more closely. It stresses the dual element of learning and working, of theory and practice as a constant feature of an entire VET system. The goal is to develop a VET system that encompasses initial and further VET, and that offers attractive career prospects (Dybowski, Puetz, Sauter, & Schmidt, 1994).
This development has been on the minds of all those who have political responsibility in German VET. Germany takes the European policy in further VET very seriously. In particular, the structural principles of subsidiarity and social dialogue comply very much with the German VET policy because they actually correspond to the principles of the Dual System.
With regard to Europe, Germany has to consider whether the principle of subsidiarity, especially in further VET, could be used to increase momentum for the innovative shaping of its own further VET system. The SMEs have a vital interest in an efficient Dual System. If the necessary political measures are taken soon, the Dual System's potential in producing high standards of competency will remain obvious to everyone--to young people and to Germany's companies.
1 Detour: There is a second type of training center in Germany, the so-called noncompany training center. Their numbers have being increased especially in Eastern Germany. Noncompany training centers differ from intercompany training centers in one essential way: The trainee enters into a contract with the center whereas otherwise he or she always enters into a contract with the company. The intercompany training only complements the in-company training, whereas the noncompany training replaces it.
Dettke, D., & Weil, C. (Eds.). (1992). Challenges for apprenticeship and vocational training in the 1990s: German and American perspectives. Washington, DC: Friedrich-Ebert Foundation (Washington Office, 1155 15th Street, NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20005).
Dybowski, G., Puetz, H., Sauter, E., & Schmidt, H. (1994). Ein Weg aus der Sackgasse--Plaedoyer fuer ein eigenstaendiges und gleichwertiges Berufsbildungssystem. Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis, Heft 6.
