The government, the funding agencies, awarding bodies, indeed  the whole educational establishment it seems, is on a quest to make education vocational.   Knights ride out into schools, colleges and universities throughout the land in an effort to slay the dragons of “education-for-its own-sake” and rescue the forlorn damsels of economic prosperity from the wicked clutches of teachers and other villains.

Not that such pressures are new.   Remember Charles Clarke, when he was education minister back in 2003, disparaging classics as a subject for study at university. “Education for its own sake, opined the minister, was “a bit dodgy”; students “needed a relationship with the workplace”.

So say his successors.   And his predecessors, for that matter.    Almost any recent government document on education starts by linking education to economic well being, arguing that competitiveness, and economic success will only come from vocational courses.

So we all chant the mantra:   vocational is good.   Non-vocational courses must be banished or, at least,  transformed into workplace-facing courses, set about by rules and regulations designed to ensure compliance.

Indeed, the point is pressed almost to absurdity.   One academic friend of mine complained to me recently about all the regulations and rigmarole dumped on his course to make it more vocational.

It’s ridiculous”, he grumbled.    “It’s a course in materials engineering, for heavens sake.   It doesn’t get any more vocational than that.”

Ah, yes.    But ministers know best.   And we want wealth, don’t we?   So we better stick to the mantra.   Shouldn’t we?

On not facing up to the facts

Well, for starters, there are things in life other than money.   Not that you’ll ever convince any politician of that.

But, even if we stick with the narrow vision that wealth equals happiness, that still begs one central question:  does vocational education make us wealthier, either as individuals or as a society?

One new study from the LSE looks at the returns from lifelong learning to individuals, both in terms of income, and social standing.   Does a bit of extra learning (or, more specifically, the qualifications that come with it) make you richer?

And they find, not surprisingly, that, broadly speaking, most forms of lifelong learning do make you better off.

But there are subtleties in the detail.   When they look at level 4 qualifications, for example, they differentiate between vocational and non-vocational qualifications gained.   And they find that:

* academic qualifications at level four make you better off:  financially better off for both men and women, and socially better off for men (but not women, interestingly).

* vocational qualifications at level four do not make you better off.   There is a “lack of any apparent impact of attaining vocational level four qualifications”.

Oh, dear.   All that ministerial rhetoric about needing university courses to be more vocational suddenly looks a bit suspect.   A bit hollow.   Simple-minded at best; crude and misleading at worst.

Of course, its only one finding from one study.   And, anyway, no minister worth his salt will ever let a few facts get in the way of a well-honed prejudice.   So the mantra will go on.   Alas.

Sources: Charles Clarke; Measuring the Returns to Lifelong Learning