As an alternative to work-based learning in enterprises outside the school, educational institutions also engage students in productive work under their own auspices. In the United States, for example, school-based enterprises traditionally attached to vocational education in high schools have performed such tasks as building houses or operating retail businesses. The 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act has recognized "school-sponsored enterprise" as a legitimate form of work-based learning. Students in school-based enterprises have reported that these promote learning more than the jobs they find on their own (Stern, Stone, Hopkins, McMillion, & Crain, 1994). A 1992 survey for the National Assessment of Vocational Education found that 19% of secondary schools in the United States were operating some kind of enterprise that involved students in producing goods or services for other people as part of their school activities (Stern, 1992b). Most of these were associated with vocational programs. For example, students in construction trades may build a house, those preparing for food service occupations may run a restaurant, classes in automotive trades often repairs cars, and a child care class may provide day care for clients outside the school. Similar activities take place in two-year colleges. These school-based enterprises are analogous to teaching hospitals run by medical schools or law review journals produced by law school students. The school enterprise provides practical experience that helps prepare students for subsequent work in a particular occupation or industry.[10]
Denmark has recently expanded its use of school-based enterprise. First, "production high schools" were created as a training and employment mechanism for young people who were not in school. These are not part of the regular education or apprenticeship system but serve unemployed young people who have completed compulsory schooling without obtaining a vocational qualification. They combine instruction in vocational and academic subjects with production of substantial products--for example, furniture or clothing--for sale to the public (but avoiding unfair competition with commercial producers). As of 1992, there were 120 production high schools enrolling approximately 9,000 students (Danish Ministry of Education, 1994, p. 132). This represented roughly 5-10% of the 15- to 29-year-old age group.
When apprenticeship placements became scarce in the 1980s, Danish policymakers built on the precedent of the production high schools to create a new option within the regular apprenticeship system. Commercial and technical colleges were authorized to use school-sponsored enterprises to provide the work experience that would ordinarily be offered by nonschool enterprises (Danish Ministry of Education, 1994, p. 101; Østerlund, 1994). Printing, retailing, and construction are examples of the activities carried out by school enterprises. There are some indications that employers prefer to have trainees work in school-based enterprises rather than in the firm during the early part of their training, when they are less profitable for firms to hire as apprentices.
School enterprises can also be used to provide work-based learning for students who are not yet specializing in a particular occupation or industry. The Junior Achievement (JA) program in the U.S. is one of the oldest examples. Started in 1919, JA has involved millions of students in mini-enterprises, usually on an extracurricular basis but sometimes for course credit. JA is sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, which recruits adult volunteers to serve as advisors and furnishes instructional materials. During one semester or year, students start up a company by raising equity capital (typically a few hundred dollars from relatives, friends, or their own savings), electing officers, and setting up accounts. They decide on a product--often a small gift item--then buy materials, produce the goods, and sell them. At the end, any profits are distributed among the stockholders.
The United Kingdom took mini-enterprises one step further. After an organization called Young Enterprise, modeled on JA, had taken up the idea as an extracurricular activity for students, the government in the 1980s promoted mini-enterprises as part of the school curriculum, providing start-up funds, teacher training, and curriculum materials. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, approximately 40% of government-supported secondary schools were reporting that they sponsored mini-enterprises. These were seen as effective means for students to learn about work, for work, and through work (Jamieson, Miller, & Watts, 1988), though not to train for specific industries or occupations.
The German dual system, which epitomizes employer-based training, actually contains important elements of school-based enterprise, though they are seldom called that. Large German companies operate separate training facilities where apprentices spend much of their time, away from the regular productive operations of shops, offices, and laboratories. According to Koch, "Especially in large companies, training generally takes place outside the work processes and is largely carried out in training workshops, offices for practice, and classrooms" (OECD 1994, p. 122). Some small employers have also established inter-firm training centers for their apprentices at a different location than the firms' actual places of business. These training facilities and inter-firm centers may not be called schools, but in fact they are, although they are owned and controlled by employers or employer organizations. One might call them enterprise-based schools where the young trainees take classes and receive formal instruction. But the apprentices in large firms' training workshops also engage in productive activities that benefit the company--for example, producing parts for use in the main factory. The most appropriate term to describe such productive activity in these settings would be school-based enterprise within enterprise-based schools!
A particularly good example of school-based enterprise for the learning-based economy is a German-sponsored organization located in Singapore called the German-Singapore Institute (GSI). Founded in 1981 as a joint venture between the Economic Development Board of Singapore and the German Agency for Technical Cooperation, GSI calls itself a "teaching factory." It carries out applied development projects for local manufacturers, while preparing technicians and middle managers in the fields of advanced manufacturing technology, factory automation and robotics, plastics manufacturing technology, and (since 1992) manufacturing software. In 1994, GSI enrolled about 1,100 students and planned to grow to 2,000 students in the next six years. Students spend most of their two or three years in laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art production equipment, much of it donated by German manufacturers. In 1991, the German Machinery and Plant Manufacturers' Association gave GSI the German Mechanical Engineering Award with a citation that commended GSI's "project-oriented approach to training within a comprehensive and practice-oriented environment." The GSI model has been emulated in Malaysia, Brazil, and elsewhere.
The capstone experience for students at GSI is the applied project in the last semester, which engages them in "production for learning." An Industrial Project Group (IPG) contracts with local companies and takes responsibility for meeting clients' cost, performance, and delivery requirements. The full-time engineers and designers in the IPG assign students to work on these undertakings, usually in groups of four to six. Projects may involve design and construction of automated manufacturing units, for example, to assemble or package electrical components. Students take responsibility for scheduling and organization, purchase of supplies, and cost calculation. Teamwork, problem solving, and creativity are emphasized.
GSI is organized in some ways more like a business than a school. Unlike most schools in Singapore, GSI teachers are not civil servants but are hired by the Employment Development Board and paid at the industry scale. Faculty and students work 44 hours a week. Instead of long holidays typical of an academic calendar, they receive only short vacations as in industry. The departments at GSI also have names that represent productive functions like tool and die making, design, and data processing, rather than academic disciplines.
In the emerging economy where production intertwines with on-line learning, the dichotomy that has divided education and schooling from work and productive enterprise has begun to break down. Integration of vocational and academic curriculum, active pedagogy that treats students as "knowledge workers," and work-based learning in enterprises inside or outside the school all blur the conventional boundary between education and work. These policy initiatives are logical responses to the recognition that productive knowledge is increasingly evanescent. Although education always will include some rote memorization and abstract exercises, and work will always include some following of orders from supervisors or clients, these no longer suffice. More than in the past, education for work must prepare a person to ask good questions and use good judgment in a practical context.
[10] Another type of school-sponsored enterprise is the student-owned business that is incubated in an entrepreneurship class. For example, REAL (Rural Entrepreneurship through Action Learning) is one organization in the United States that provides an entrepreneurship curriculum for helping students, primarily in rural areas, develop such enterprises which may then "graduate with the student" and become part of the local economic base. In contrast, the school-based enterprises described in the text are owned by the school and may continue to enroll students in succeeding years.