Training and development in the Dutch context: an overture to the knowledge society?

Recent debate in The Netherlands has raised the question of whether the Dutch economy can meet the requirements of the emerging knowledge society. One of the main requirements will be the establishment of a symbiotic relationship between business systems and the education system. By analysing trends and developments in formal vocational education and corporate training and development over the last two decades we observe some major changes in the formal education system and in corporate training and development. In the formal education system a major transformation has taken place towards an alignment with the business system. In the corporate system we see a rapid growth and expansion in training and development. However, when we look to these developments in greater detail we observe striking differences in growth between sectors, sex, age, prior education and ethnicity. For this reason we conclude that the main challenge for the emerging Dutch knowledge society is to prevent people from being excluded from the expansion in training and development.