Economic Determinants of Training and the Debate over Training Policy Options in West Germany

Over the past 5–8 years most industrialised countries in Western Europe have experienced a rapid expansion of labour market regulations with a long list of new proposals awaiting legislation. In the field of education and training the rationale behind many of these anticipatory, preventive, corrective or otherwise named measures and planning instruments has been nurtured by two substantially different strands of thought: the economic notions of interrelationships between education, technology and economic growth on the one hand, and the use of educational reform for social policy purposes on the other. The impact of the former group has made itself felt in the enthusiasm and almost religious belief that more education is to be preferred to less, and that increases in the levels of schooling and training would be the panacea to economic growth and at the same time ease structural imbalances of labour markets. Industrial sociologists, political—and education—scientists, who on the other hand, were primarily concerned with the realisation of objectives such as equality of educational opportunities, industrial democracy and worker co‐determination or the humanisation of working conditions came basically to the same conclusion that more education for larger segments of the working population would be instrumental in achieving these objectives. Increased education, they argued, would give workers better starting chances, a larger mobility and flexibility potential, greater chances for promotion and more protection from the perils of structural change. Thus, while in the beginning a consensus existed on the desired directions of change in the field of education, as a subfield of active labour market policy, views very quickly diverged on the organisation and details of such changes; for example, what the proportions and roles of self‐regulating (market) forces as opposed to labour market interventions ought to be, whether monetary or non‐monetary control instruments would be more appropriate, how large and extensive the overhaul of the complete education system should be and what coincident or complementary measures were needed to make such proposals work in practice.