Introduction
A generation of young workers is quickly becoming the “forgotten men” of the twenty-first century; indeed, not since Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” have countries seemed so willing to devour their young. Deindustrialization’s hollowing out of medium-skill manufacturing jobs means that employment opportunities are increasingly clustering into two extremes: knowledge-intensive positions for the well-educated and poorly paid service-sector jobs for low-skill workers. Education is called upon to solve the social problems attendant to deindustrialization: disappearing jobs, stark generational inequities, and a new stratum of young people who are not in education, employment, or training (NEETs). Schools must simultaneously build skills, shape citizens, and sustain social stability at a time when a generation of understandably angry young people feel denied and betrayed by the illusive dreams of their forefathers. Once again reformers strive to balance education for academically minded (such as elite knowledge workers in the post-industrial economy) with education for all (less academically talented and/or lower-class students who are in danger of being left behind).
This chapter considers why we should care about events in centuries past when countries are so utterly overwhelmed today by the extravagant calamities of the twenty-first century. I argue that the cultural frames forged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continue to resonate today in the educational policy choices and political economies of skill formation in Britain and Denmark. Institutions, policy legacies, and patterns of interest group contestation all contribute to cross-national differences in education policy, but cultural frames constitute the subtext underlying these struggles.
Contemporary debates over schooling are anchored by educational philosophies eerily reminiscent of the past. A neoliberal or new public management philosophy involves both setting up private markets in education and strengthening or adopting more extensive national regulations. A stronger national assessment regime would aid in improving educational excellence, ensuring equality of educational opportunity, and expanding quality schooling for working-class young people (Coleman et al. Reference Coleman, Campbell, Hobson, McPartland, Mood, Weinfeld and York1966; Montt Reference Montt2011, 52). Arguments supporting this approach are reminiscent of those used to defend the 1862 Revised Code in Britain (Lee Reference Lee2019). A social investment model, on the other hand, presupposes that strong and varied upper secondary tracks are key to training low-skill youth (Busemeyer and Trampusch Reference Anderson, Nijhuis, Busemeyer and Trampusch2011; Ryan Reference Ryan2001), and this perspective harkens back to the nineteenth-century Danish discussions about the cultural formation of the working class.
British and Danish educational choices continue to resonate with cultural frames established long ago. Policymakers in both countries consider schooling, and particularly vocational education, as a partial palliative to problems of efficiency and equality; yet, they struggle to achieve these goals in slightly different ways. In keeping with Britain’s historic neglect of workforce skills, politicians today pay lip service to vocational education but devote few resources to it, leaving content development to private service providers, utilizing on-the-job training, and doing little to impart real skills for less academic students (Payne and Keep Reference Payne and Keep2011). Denmark devotes more resources to vocational education, yet reformers have encountered problems related to simultaneously providing programs with stringent requirements for more highly skilled students and programs with more relaxed requirements to retain less capable students in school. In addition, the British maintain a strong national assessment regime, whereas Danes are reluctant to abandon local control over curricula and assessment, despite EU prodding.
These British and Danish policy choices, informed by cultural values, have political and economic implications for the treatment of marginally skilled youth, inequality, social solidarity, and social stability. Compared to Britain, Denmark spends more per capita on education, has more students finish upper-secondary schooling, produces fewer NEETs, and enjoys a higher degree of equality (OECD 2021). Countries’ specific problems in integrating vulnerable populations resonate with their cultural inheritances. British efforts to equalize schooling focus on rewarding winners from the working class, but these interventions have done little to improve the substandard provision of skills for nonacademic learners. National standards have failed to end inequities among schools, and many vocational programs offer little in terms of real skills (Keep and Mayhew Reference Keep and Mayhew2010). Education reforms have neither fixed soaring inequality nor improved the lives of the precariat. Danes, meanwhile, have tried to make vocational education meet the needs of all, but with deindustrialization, reformers have had greater difficulty addressing the contradictory needs of high and low-skill workers (Martin and Knudsen Reference Martin and Knudsen2010). Particularly problematic is that immigrants are disproportionately represented in the ranks of NEETs and the poorly educated (Fallesen Reference Fallesen2015).
Cultural legacies from the past also echo in young people’s longing for a better education system. An internet survey of 2100 British and Danish young people reveals the continuation of cultural tropes in the sharply divergent perceptions of appropriate education reforms. On the one hand, British students support national quality standards and uniform curricula to improve schools; yet they express frustration with their own learning experiences, which they feel have little meaning for work and life. They support investments in vocational education as a means of achieving greater equality but fear the strong arm of the state. Danish students, on the other hand, are happier with their education system, seek educational investments to strengthen society, and tend to appreciate their school experiences, which provide practical, real-life skills. Upper-secondary vocational education students are more likely to report obtaining useful skills than their British colleagues. Yet Danish NEETs are significantly more pessimistic than either their fellow citizens with vocational degrees or British school leavers. These truly disadvantaged youth feel shut out of the core economy and their exclusion feels so much more agonizing because of the disconnect with the collective cultural memories of the past.
The Twenty-First Century Skills Paradox
Deindustrialization poses fundamental challenges for education systems and for policymakers who seek to deliver education for all. It alters the skills profiles that employers need, forcing policymakers to offer a broader range of competencies. Once-abundant jobs for medium-skilled, manufacturing workers have largely disappeared, and employment now clusters into high-skilled jobs in knowledge-intensive sectors and low-skilled jobs in service sectors (Wren Reference Wren2013; Carstensen and Emmenegger Reference Carstensen and Emmenegger2023). Tertiary education is necessary for highly skilled workers in the knowledge economy (Ansell and Gingrich Reference Ansell and Gingrich2013; Durazzi Reference Durazzi2020). But as social risks have increased with deindustrialization, education is also increasingly called upon to protect individuals against marginalization and to achieve some measure of equality. Therefore, education and social investment in skills are now an important component of social policy (Busemeyer Reference Busemeyer2015; Busemeyer and Trampusch Reference Anderson, Nijhuis, Busemeyer and Trampusch2011; Di Stasio and Solga Reference Di Stasio and Solga2017; Carstensen and Emmenegger Reference Carstensen and Emmenegger2023).
These tensions turn vocational education and training (VET) into a location for conflict. Traditional VET programs for medium-skill, industrial workers are too lengthy for low-skill service workers; consequently, countries have developed short-track courses for lower-skilled students. But policymakers also wish to offer sufficiently rigorous instruction and conceptual learning to higher-skilled vocational workers, which threatens to drive low-skilled youths out of schooling altogether (Martin and Knudsen Reference Martin and Knudsen2010; Anderson and Hassel Reference Anderson, Hassel and Wren2013; Bonoli and Wilson Reference Bonoli and Wilson2019; Di Maio et al. Reference Di Maio, Graf and Wilson2019; Emmenegger and Seitzl Reference Emmenegger and Seitzl2020; Bonoli and Emmenegger Reference Bonoli and Emmenegger2021; Carstensen and Emmenegger Reference Carstensen and Emmenegger2023; Garritzmann et al. Reference Garritzmann, Häusermann and Palier2022).
Meanwhile, NEETs have risen in numbers across the world: in 2013, youth unemployment (ages 15–29) reached 12.6 percent worldwide and 15.8 percent within OECD countries. Many young people also work part-time (25 percent of their total employment in 2011) and on temporary contracts (40.5 percent). Studies have shown that becoming a NEET early in life permanently damages an individual’s subsequent career opportunities; for example, youthful NEETs are nearly three times as likely to be unemployed as adults (International Labour Organisation 2013, 1, 11, xi, 7; Mroz and Savage Reference Mroz and Savage2006). Furthermore, two-thirds of OECD countries do not provide unemployment benefits for young drop-outs unless they have satisfied work requirements, usually of a year’s duration (Scarpetta et al. Reference Scarpetta, Sonnet and Manfredt2010: 24). Youth unemployment depresses individual wages and contributes to rising crime rates, as young people are more likely to commit crimes when they are loosely connected to society (Sampson and Laub Reference Sampson and Laub2005: 22). Having experience with unemployment as a young person can even detract from long-term happiness, health outcomes, and job satisfaction (Bell and Blanchflower Reference Bell and Blanchflower2009).
The great migration flows of the past decade have also put pressures on education systems that all too often uneasily serve the needs of immigrants and especially refugees (Aerne and Bonoli Reference Aerne and Bonoli2021). In 2017, 27 percent of all young people aged 15–34 within the OECD came from a migrant background, which tends to correlate with lower socio-economic status and presents challenges for social integration. Vocational education is widely perceived as a vehicle for facilitating the incorporation of immigrants (Jeon Reference Jeon2019, 12–14).
Contemporary Debates over Education
Debates over how to solve contemporary educational challenges resonate with those of the past. At least two major philosophies inspire educational prescriptions: neoliberal or new public management ideas and social investment ideas. First, neoliberal, new public management ideas to improve education prescribe an expanded assessment regime (with stronger national regulations, standardized curricula, and funding linked to students’ test scores) as well as marketization of education achieved through privatization (Coleman et al. Reference Coleman, Campbell, Hobson, McPartland, Mood, Weinfeld and York1966; Montt Reference Montt2011, 52; Powell and Solga Reference Powell and Solga2010). While national standards and privatization might seem inconsistent, both are purported to encourage school competition (Berube Reference Berube1996). Progressives support national standards to further equality of educational opportunity (Kliebard and Franklin Reference Kliebard and Franklin2000; Van de Werfhorst and Mijs Reference Van de Werfhorst and Mijs2010; West and Nikolai Reference West and Nikolai2013). Conservatives appreciate the marketization of education and reduced teacher autonomy (Porter Reference Porter1994, 425). National standards also benefit employers by furnishing data that may be used to assess individual competencies; and the use of grades as a signaling mechanism – or a quick and easy measure of the skills of potential workers – helps to reduce firms’ hiring costs (Gleeson and Keep Reference Gleeson and Keep2004, 52).
Second, social investment ideas suggest multi-track educational opportunities, such as vocational classes and individualized learning, to improve the skills of nonacademic students. Working-class youth and nonacademic learners do best in countries with strong vocational education systems, in which instructional pace and methods are appropriate to their learning styles (Ryan Reference Ryan2001; Gallie Reference Gallie2007; Allmendinger and Leibfried Reference Allmendinger and Leibfried2003; Busemeyer and Trampusch Reference Anderson, Nijhuis, Busemeyer and Trampusch2011). Countries often involve employers’ associations and labor unions in overseeing vocational education curricula and programs: input from the social partners helps programs to produce specific skills tailored to industrial requirements (Breen Reference Breen2005, 125; Gangl Reference Gangl2004; Martin Reference Martin2011). The European Union set a goal of increased vocational education and training with the 2002 Copenhagen Process and the 2015 Riga Conclusions (UK NARIC 2017; Powell and Solga Reference Powell and Solga2010).
Reformers grapple with two types of inequalities: those associated with class and race and those associated with different cognitive strengths and learning styles. These inequalities show up in different ways depending on the reformers’ choices and priorities. Proponents of neoliberal ideas rightfully fear that multi-track systems could lead to working-class children being summarily shunted into vocational tracks that amount to second-class schooling in some countries (Benavot Reference Benavot1983). Standards may ameliorate class inequalities by providing more uniform instruction across schools and by improving access to quality education for academically talented winners from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Equal educational opportunities also shape children’s perceptions of fairness of broader political and socioeconomic structures. Upper-track students in highly stratified, affluent schools are more likely to perceive education as fair and to vote conservative than those in the lower tracks. But in less stratified schools, students from diverse levels of attainment are much less polarized in their views of fairness and political identities (Gingrich Reference Gingrich2019, 325; Gingrich and Giudici Reference Gingrich and Giudici2023).
Proponents of the social investment approach have a different perspective. They rightfully point out that without instruction tailored to capabilities, weaker students may be damaged by unrealistic expectations and pushed out of education altogether. National standards potentially may exacerbate inequalities of competencies, at the same time as they ameliorate class inequalities, because standards may impose unrealistic learning expectations on children with fewer academic skills (Kirst Reference Kirst1994; Kliebard and Franklin Reference Kliebard and Franklin2000; Hanushek and Wöẞmann Reference Hanushek and Wößmann2006; Pritchett Reference Pritchett2013). Mandated curricula may force teachers to “teach to the test,” limit their ability to proceed at the pace of their students, and force the introduction of topics before students are developmentally ready (Tamir and Davidson Reference Tamir and Davidson2011, 240). Teacher quality may decline if instructors are overburdened by standards; thus, Hursh (Reference Hursh2007, 508) links increased high-school drop-outs rates in New York State to the introduction of high-stakes testing. The American No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001, increased inequities, because the middle class fled from public school systems to escape the dreary results of teaching-to-the-test (Rhodes Reference Rhodes2012).
British and Danmark’s susceptibility to these educational philosophies reflects each country’s cultural values. Neoliberal reforms seem bred in the bone on Anglo ground – shades of Robert Lowe – and it is no wonder that they have taken hold in Britain (see Manna Reference Manna2006, 12, and Rhodes Reference Rhodes2012 for the reception of these ideas in the United States). Neoliberal, new public management ideas closely align with past policy choices in Britain that are geared to the self-development of the individual and that help individual students receive equal treatment. Reformers are anxious to specify what and how students learn, and to document the fruits of their endeavors with standardized tests and elaborate mechanisms for assessing schools, teachers, and students. In contrast, Denmark’s choices fit with its long-term commitment to educating all workers and to community self-determination.
Recent Policy Reforms in Britain and Denmark
The influence of these educational philosophies, mediated by long-standing cultural values, is unmistakable in recent policy reforms. Countries’ policy choices are closely aligned with their positions on efficiency, equality, and governance; and together, these choices add up to distinctive education regimes or worlds of human capital formation (Iversen and Stephens Reference Iversen and Stephens2008; Garritzmann et al. Reference Garritzmann, Häusermann and Palier2022; Carstensen and Ibsen Reference Carstensen and Lyhne Ibsen2019; Bonoli and Emmenegger Reference Bonoli and Emmenegger2021).
Cultural frames inform countries’ educational policy choices in several dimensions. First, Iversen and Stephen’s (2008) efficiency dimension concerns whether countries cultivate general skills through unitary secondary education or specific skills through vocational programs. Cultural frames inform the types of skills that are valued in a society: some countries (e.g., Britain) have a cultural bias toward academic learning, whereas others (e.g., Denmark) also value practical skills, often acquired through experiential learning. Second, the equality dimension constitutes the degree of commitment to redistribution and public education, which is higher in Denmark and lower in Britain. Cultural frames shape the justifications for equality in educational attainment. Third, Carstensen and Ibsen’s (2019) governance dimension comprises attitudes toward who controls education, typically either states, markets, or academic self-governance bodies within higher education (Clark Reference Clark1983). There are also questions about whether governance is best achieved through centralized assessment regimes and specified curricula or whether autonomy should also be granted to local government, schools, and teachers.
Recent educational reforms in Britain and Denmark confirm that the two countries make different policy choices relevant to efficiency, equality, and governance. Policymakers in both countries strive to balance efficiency and equality, hoping to improve skills and international competitiveness, while also worrying about the rising number of NEETs (Carstensen and Ibsen Reference Carstensen and Lyhne Ibsen2019). Yet policymakers’ choices resonate with cultural touchstones observed in the nineteenth century, and their specific policy choices about vocational training suggest the persistence of distinctive national values. While it is beyond our scope to offer an extensive examination of recent British and Danish education reforms, the following paragraphs offer examples of cultural influences on policy choices.
Britain
Education reform became an important priority for both major British parties in the 1980s, following Margaret Thatcher’s transformative 1988 Education Act, which created a stronger national assessment regime and privatization measures to develop quasi-markets in education. The approach (which continued under Thatcher’s successors) drew broad ideological support: The right favored the market mechanisms and reduced teacher autonomy, and the left favored national standards to improve educational equality (Porter Reference Porter1994, 425).
With respect to skills and efficiency, a plethora of private training options have developed below the upper-secondary level, but these are poorly funded and fail to provide real skills (Wolf Reference Wolf2002; Keep and Mayhew Reference Keep and Mayhew2010; Payne and Keep Reference Payne and Keep2011). In keeping with its historical strength in general education, Britain has made a far greater commitment to the expansion of tertiary education than to vocational education in recent decades (Durazzi Reference Durazzi2020). Moreover, while new governments repeatedly rolled out new vocational training initiatives, they got rid of old programs established under their predecessors and lost past gains. Thatcher replaced the Labour governments’ Manpower Services Commission with a new (and inferior) on-the-job training program, called the Youth Training Scheme (YTS), and a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) credential that increased opportunities for private training providers. Tony Blair launched a (more successful) system to teach sector-level skills under the auspices of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) (Wolf Reference Wolf2002). David Cameron ended funding for the Blair initiatives and created his own Skills for Sustainable Growth. Despite all of these initiatives, British vocational programs remained consistently underfunded compared to those of countries with more developed VET traditions (Keep and Mayhew Reference Keep and Mayhew2010; Payne and Keep Reference Payne and Keep2011). Critics argued that skills offered “the illusion of a loser-free form of redistribution” and a solution to all social and economic ills (Keep and Mayhew Reference Keep and Mayhew2010, 565, 568). For example, Cameron’s apprenticeships were set at only the unskilled level 2, inadequately funded with direct subsidies to small employers for training, and accompanied by 25 percent cuts from the national education budget (Payne Reference Payne2011).
With respect to equality, the reforms have been criticized for failing to devote substantial resources to education and to improve appreciably the education of low-skill youth, despite this vocalized commitment. Politicians have preferred to address quality and access issues by adjusting standards rather than through substantial financial investments (Wolf Reference Wolf2002). Moreover, while school reforms have equalized opportunities across social groups to some extent, the local control of schools means that these reforms have also reproduced disadvantages. Test scores have risen but school rankings have stayed the same (Gingrich forthcoming).
With respect to governance, British reformers enthusiastically created national standards, linked funding to test scores, and privatized schools, but teachers expressed frustration with standardized curricula that forced them to teach to the test (Tamir and Davidson Reference Tamir and Davidson2011, 240). The Wolf report recommended that business and labor groups be involved in discussions of qualifications, curricula, and quality controls (Wolf Reference Wolf2011, 10–12). Yet this failed to transpire, apart from the promising but quickly abandoned UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) experiment. A Trades Union Congress (TUC) representative remarked, “Conservatives use the term “apprenticeship” very loosely, and consider many sorts of provider-led, on-the-job training programs as apprenticeships. This negates the true meaning of an apprenticeship, which includes strong educational and work components” (Interview with TUC, March 17, 2015). The A Confederation of British Industry (CBI) representative agreed that the government faltered in providing training programs that delivered real skills: “The government has accepted the idea that there is a need for the resurgence of Britain’s vocational roots…yet they still behave as if these were policy for someone else’s children, for marginal workers” (Interview with CBI March 18, 2015).
Denmark
During the twentieth century, Denmark continued on the educational course that it had set in the nineteenth century. A system of secondary education was established, consisting of a multi-track, academic gymnasium for university-bound students, a technical/business track also leading to tertiary education and a dual vocational training system comprised of school courses and firm-based apprenticeships. Spending on public education remained high, and Basic Vocational Training programs (Erhvervsgrunduddannelse) were added to VET offerings in 1993 to ensure that less capable students also could have access to upper secondary education (Jørgensen Reference Jørgensen2015). Local governments, schools, and teachers retained control over curricula and assessment, and schools had a comparatively flat administrative structure that emphasized democracy and autonomy (Hansen et al. Reference Hansen, Ditlev Bøje and Beck2014, 585). Overall, Denmark relied less than the US on testing, grades, and report cards up through the ninth grade, and assignments were more likely to be done in group projects (Morrill Reference Morrill2003). Danish schooling remained more focused on the “whole child,” and was more committed to community and local democracy than education in England and France (Osborn Reference Osborn2001, 270). But when disappointing Danish PISA scores in 2001 and 2004 raised alarm about educational quality, the OECD pressured Denmark to adopt new public management reforms (Shewbrige et al. 2011, 6–7).
Thus, Danish policymakers also grapple with competing aims of efficiency, equality, and governance, but they have resolved the conflicts in slightly different ways from their British colleagues. With respect to efficiency and skills, policymakers have struggled to sustain robust vocational education options that serve both marginally and highly skilled non-academic workers. In attempting to meet these competing goals, policy makers have vacillated in successive vocational education reforms between tightening qualifications for high-end students’ skills development and lowering qualifications to retain weak students (Martin and Knudsen Reference Martin and Knudsen2010; Juul and Jørgensen 2011; Sletting Reference Sletting2014). A major vocational reform act in 2000 created high standards and many individual programs, but these changes caused difficulties for low-skill workers. Another reform in 2007 made VET less individualized and more accessible to the low-skilled, but did less for higher-skilled youth (Jørgensen Reference Jørgensen2015, 68). A 2014 reform sought to provide both better training for high-skill workers and shorter courses for less-skilled workers, while also expanding the number of VET students, increasing completion rates, consolidating tracks, and improving the transition to tertiary programs (Danish Ministry of Education 2014, 7–17).
The constant adjustment of VET standards has been accompanied by declining enrollment rates. In 2001, over 30 percent of students applied for VET slots upon finishing compulsory school, but only around 18 percent applied in 2017 (Andersen and Kruse Reference Andersen and Kruse2018, 4). In 2016, only 8.3 percent of Danish youth were in upper-secondary vocational programs, compared to 27 percent in the Netherlands (Jeon Reference Jeon2019, 14). One reason for the decline is that students view gymnasium education as necessary for a future as knowledge workers; yet, academic programs have been overly challenging for many students. Vocational students also left programs because they could not obtain apprenticeship slots (Jørgensen Reference Jørgensen2015, 67–70).
With respect to equality, Denmark has done more to extend VET to marginal workers than many other countries (Bonoli and Wilson Reference Bonoli and Wilson2019). In 1999, Denmark won the Bertelsmann Prize, which honors the world’s most innovative vocational education and training system (Andersen and Kruse Reference Andersen and Kruse2018, 3–4). Policymakers have improved services for first- and second-generation immigrant youth, who are over-represented in vocational education. In 2008, 60 percent of young immigrants in Denmark attended VET programs compared with 54 percent of native-born youth. Yet only 51 percent of students overall – and only 39 percent of immigrant students – completed their VET secondary programs (Nusche et al. Reference Nusche, Wurzburg and Naughton2010, 43). Educators created a vocational option called the Basic Integration Education (Integrationsgrunduddannelsen) that offers refugees work and training within firms and that is comparable to other basic VET programs. Although the program does not deliver formal qualifications, it is thought to strengthen refugees’ position within the economy (Danish Ministry of Immigration and Integration 2016). Bureaucrats have also improved systems for recognizing the qualifications that migrants bring from their home countries so that they are able to enter the labor force faster and more efficiently (Danish Ministry of Immigration and Integration 2016). Yet, the declining overall number of VET students threatens to harm nonacademic youth who were once well-served by the programs (Andersen and Kruse Reference Andersen and Kruse2018, 4).
With respect to governance, although the OECD pressured Denmark to establish a national “evaluation culture,” officials have resisted nationalizing assessments. A 2006 act established some national bodies to guide municipalities in overseeing quality and student outcomes, and a 2013 act created a more rigorous system of assessments and performance standards (Shewbridge et al. Reference Shewbridge, Jang, Matthews and Santiago2011, 6–7). But the 2013 reform stipulated that teachers would retain the right to formulate their own curricula, although teams of experts were set up in each field to develop guidelines for meeting common objectives. Municipalities retained control over assessment but were required to submit quality reports to the national government (Danish Ministry of Education 2014). Even with these limitations, the neoliberal reforms generated significant opposition. In 2006, the Danish Teachers’ Federation (DLF) worried that the proposed individual action plans would limit teachers’ capacities to prepare adequately and involve excessive levels of centralized government control. Their concerns prompted politicians to scale back the changes (Politikken 2006). Teachers viewed the proposed changes as violating norms of voluntary cooperation, and cultural values of cooperation, diversity, self-management, and “bottom-up democracy” have persisted in the administration and pedagogy of teaching (Hjort and Raae Reference Hjort and Henrik Raae2011, 186; Hansen et al. Reference Hansen, Ditlev Bøje and Beck2014, 584–5).Footnote 1 Denmark has also sustained high levels of involvement by the social partners in the oversight of the vocational system (DA Interview, June 2015).
Thus, cultural values from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have persisted in Britain and Denmark’s recent reform efforts, as policymakers have struggled to address the challenges of the twenty-first century. British policymakers have enthusiastically embraced national standards to achieve equality of educational opportunity, relied on private-sector intermediaries to make candidates “job ready,” created credentialing signals for employers, and received limited help from the social partners to connect vocational programs to real job needs. These features have rewarded talented “winners” and neglected those with more limited capacities. Denmark has been more hesitant to adopt neoliberal reforms and has struggled to sustain its cultural commitment to educating all the people by balancing the needs of high and low-skilled workers in the collective provision of skills. Traditions of cooperation, self-management, teacher autonomy, and local control have held firm even with the adoption of new public management ideas.
Political Economic Impacts
Ultimately, each country’s accumulated policy choices, informed by cultural values, have contributed to their respective political economy of skill formation. Britain lags behind Denmark in formulating policies for lower-skilled youth on both efficiency and equality dimensions, and the impacts of these programmatic choices may be observed in outcome measures.
In terms of commitment to skill development, Denmark (with 4.8 percent of the GDP) devotes more public funding to education than Britain (with 4 percent of the GDP) (OECD 2021, 247). Danish rates of educational attainment are also higher than Britain’s: Denmark’s first-time, upper-secondary graduation rate for students under twenty-five years was 81.6 percent, compared to 65.6 percent in Britain and 73.1 percent in Germany (OECD 2021, 179, Table B3.3). Tertiary education is free in Denmark, but it costs on average $53,600 in Britain (OECD 2021, 109–10, Tables A5.1 & A5.2). The same number (25 percent) of non-international students under twenty-five enter tertiary education in both countries (OECD 2021, 197, Table B4.1). But in 2019, 53 percent of Danish 20–4 year-olds and 28 percent of 25–9 year-olds remained in education, compared to only 33 percent of British 20–4 year-olds and 10 percent of 25–9 year-olds (OECD 2021, 155, Figure B1.1).
In terms of equality, countries’ educational choices have contributed to their different patterns of employment and class stratification (Di Stasio and Solga Reference Di Stasio and Solga2017; Iversen and Stephens Reference Iversen and Stephens2008; West and Nikolai Reference West and Nikolai2013: 474; Busemeyer Reference Busemeyer2015). Denmark is one of the most equal countries in the world, with a Gini coefficient of 28.2 in 2018; in comparison, Britain’s Gini coefficient was 35.1 in 2017 (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gini-coefficient-by-country). Compared to Britain, Denmark’s stronger efforts to retain low-skilled youth in education seem relevant to labor force participation rates. While 5.4 percent of eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old Brits are NEETs, 3.9 percent of comparable Danes fall into this category (OECD 2021, 55).
Yet foreign-born Danes are over-represented in the lower levels and under-represented in the middle levels of educational attainment. Thus, 18 percent of native-born Danish twenty-five- to sixty-four-year olds had less than a secondary education, compared to 21 percent foreign-born Danes in the same age group. In Britain, only 15 percent of those born elsewhere have less than a secondary education compared with 19 percent of native born. Forty-three percent of native-born Danes compared to only 35 percent of foreign-born only completed an upper-secondary level education; in Britain, 35 percent native-born only completed an upper-secondary education compared to 16 percent of foreign-born. A large share of British immigrants are individuals with very high skills and Britain generally has a higher percentage of those with tertiary degrees than Denmark. Thus, 68 percent of foreign-born British citizens have tertiary degrees, compared to 46 percent of native-born; whereas in Denmark, 44 percent of foreign born adults have tertiary degrees, compared to 38 percent of native-born adults (OECD 2021, 50, Table A1.3).Footnote 2 British and Danish immigrants may differ in relevant respects; for example, Denmark may have fewer immigrants who are selected for their high educational attainment. Yet vocational education is widely perceived as a means of incorporating immigrants (Jeon Reference Jeon2019, 12–4), and the fewer foreign-born students in vocational training and over-representation of foreign born in the lowest educational category suggests cause for concern in Denmark (Fallesen Reference Fallesen2015).
Contemporary Perceptions of Education Reform
A Survey
Finally, cultural views of education resonate in the ways that young people ponder educational reforms. In an internet survey, my co-authors and I asked 2100 young people in Britain and Denmark to write about their preferences for diverse forms of education as well as their own experiences (Martin et al. Reference Martin, Pastore and Munk Christiansen2023). Their perceptions largely align with their countries’ cultural constructions of schooling and reflect the challenges of education in the twenty-first century.
Before stating the hypotheses, one must note that Danish respondents in public opinion polls have elsewhere been found to express less support for additional spending on education than British respondents. This is because Denmark already spends more on education than Britain, and Danes place greater priority on additional spending for other welfare measures such as health care (Busemeyer et al. Reference Busemeyer, Garritzmann and Neimanns2020). Our research confirms this finding: 88 percent of British respondents supported additional spending on education, compared to only 63.3 percent of Danish respondents.
If cultural frames about education persist, then we should expect to see the same differences between British and Danish respondents in the modern survey that we observed in the historical analysis of literature. These differences should pertain to the dimensions of education regimes discussed above: views of skills (efficiency), education for workers and references to society (equality), and the role of the state and assessment regimes (governance).
First, on the efficiency dimension, compared to Britain, Danish authors historically have been more likely to associate education with workforce skills and to place value on both academic and practical skills. Therefore, we expect that contemporary Danish respondents should demonstrate greater support for vocational training (compared to general academic upper-secondary education) than British respondents, who should place a clear priority on building academic skills over vocational ones. Denmark should show a bigger increase in support for vocational training (compared to all education spending) than British respondents. We also expect support for spending to rise more sharply in Denmark than in Britain when respondents are given the cultural cue that spending will increase skills for international competitiveness (see Table 6.1).
Table 6.1 Internet survey hypotheses
| Skills |
| 1)The ratio of support for spending on vocational education over general education should be higher in Denmark than in Britain. |
| 2)Support for spending should rise more sharply in Denmark than in Britain when respondents are given the cultural cue that spending will increase skills for international competitiveness. |
| Society |
| 3)Support for education spending should increase in Denmark but not in Britain when respondents are given a cultural cue linking education to citizenship and society. |
| 4)Support for education spending should increase in Britain but not in Denmark when respondents are given a cultural cue linking education to individual self-development. |
| 5)British respondents should be more likely than Danish respondents to support a person’s right to choose his/her own educational program, even if this goes against societal needs. |
| Oversight and assessment |
| 6)British respondents should be more likely than Danish respondents to support national regulations stipulating curricula. |
| 7)British respondents should be more likely than Danish respondents to support linking funding to test scores. |
Second, on the equality and social solidarity dimension, Danish authors have historically been more likely to view education as a means of building a strong society than British authors. Therefore, we expect that a cultural cue linking education to citizenship and society will increase support for education spending in Denmark but not in Britain. In contrast, a cultural cue linking education to individual self-development should increase support for education spending in Britain but not in Denmark. The cultural importance of education for society should also mean that Danish respondents will be less likely than their British counterparts to support a person’s right to choose his/her own educational program even if this goes against societal needs (see Table 6.1).
Third, on the governance dimension, we expect respondents in the two countries to have different views of government assessment and oversight. Historically, British authors who view education as a means for individual self-development have been more likely to mention assessment and regulation in their depictions of education than Danish authors. Therefore, we expect contemporary British respondents to voice a higher level of support for national regulations stipulating curricula than Danish respondents, who are more likely to support local autonomy. British respondents should also be more likely to support linking funding to test scores than Danish respondents (see Table 6.1).
We make both cross-national comparisons (of similarly trained respondents in the two systems) and within-country comparisons of respondents who are in different types of educational programs. We choose the coordinated market economy of Britain and the liberal market economy of Denmark because these countries have historical differences in their economic and educational models, yet recent similarities in their economic trajectories of deinstitutionalization and financialization.
We use commercial internet panels constructed by Qualtrics to generate convenience samples for our two countries for this online survey. Convenience sampling is a type of non-probability sampling that relies on data collection from members of the population who are conveniently available to participate in the study. Convenience samples in some instances may be vulnerable to selection bias and sampling error, yet are credible and reliable here because we do not assess the educational attainment figures of national populations (which requires a random sample). Moreover, Qualtrics is a particularly reliable resource; and convenience samples are shown to be nearly as representative as random samples (Boas et al. Reference Boas, Christenson and Glick2020).
We also design the survey to strengthen our capacity to draw robust conclusions. We compare groups within two countries using the same methods and anticipate that deviation from the broader universe of subjects occurs similarly in the two countries. That respondents in Qualtrics surveys are younger than the general population is unproblematic because we purposefully select respondents between the ages of twenty and thirty. Many questions in the survey utilize experimental design, by adding prompts for sub-groups and evaluating how these responses differ from the control group. Experimental questions bolster internal validity, eliminate biases within the sample and minimize the effects of confounding factors. We also use inclusion and exclusion criteria – for example, quotas for educational attainment and age – in order to compare specific groups of differentially educated students in the two countries.
Findings
The findings largely confirm that British and Danish respondents differ in their views of education regimes along the various dimensions we considered: efficiency (skills), equality (class and society), and governance (assessment regimes). As mentioned above, although respondents in both countries support additional spending on education, a significantly larger share of British students (88 percent) support spending more on education (even if doing so means raising taxes) than Danish ones (63.3 percent). In an open-ended question response, a British person urges “funding for the teachers,” adding that “the salary is poor and so we are lacking skilled professionals.”
Yet once we factor in the baseline differences in support for education spending in total, our cultural predictions largely hold. First, on the efficiency dimension, the leap from support for all educational spending to support for vocational education spending is much greater in Denmark than in Britain. In Britain, 88 percent support spending on all education compared to 90.7 percent who support spending on vocational training. In Denmark, the 63.3 percent who support additional spending on all education jumps to 78.6 percent when asked about more spending on vocational education. This may seem surprising, given the individual choices of most students not to enter vocational programs in recent years. Yet we might infer from this finding that Danish young people are more likely than their British counterparts to view the development of multiple types of skills as crucial to society. Moreover, while levels of participation in vocational training programs have dropped in recent years, Danish graduates of upper-secondary VET programs (77 percent) are happier with their skills than British graduates (70 percent). Danish upper-secondary VET graduates (72 percent) also have an easier time finding apprenticeships than similarly trained British young people (55 percent) (see Table 6.2).
Table 6.2 Internet survey findings
| Hypotheses | Categories | Britain | Denmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skills | |||
| Hypothesis 1 | Support for all education spending Support for VET spending | 88% 90% | 63.3% 78.6% |
| Increase | 2% | 15.3% | |
| Hypothesis 2 | Support for all spending With the added competitiveness cue | 87.7 =>89.9 | 65.5 => 69.9 |
| Increase | 2.2% | 4.4% | |
| Society | |||
| Hypothesis 3 | Spending when linked to citizenship cue | 87% | 79% |
| Hypothesis 4 | Spending when linked to self-development cue | 92% | 75% |
| Hypothesis 5 | Right to choose program if against society | 98.6% | 93.1% |
| Oversight/assessment | |||
| Hypothesis 6 | Support for national curricula | 73% | 57% |
| Hypothesis 7 | Support for linking funding to test scores | 63% | 48% |
Comments from open-ended questions support the finding that Danish students favor programs for the development of multiple types of skills. A respondent rejects “the idea that all (especially children) should learn in the same way”; another believes that education should “give young people the opportunity to tailor an education that fits the job they want in the future.” Echoing Grundtvig, another seeks “Less focus on grades and more focus on humanistic qualities.”
Moreover, respondents in both countries endorse increased spending to improve skills associated with competition in world markets, but the increase from the control group when adding a competitiveness cue is slightly larger in Denmark. The introduction of this cue increases British support from 87.7 percent (control group) to 89.9 percent (competitiveness cue). The introduction of this cue in Denmark increases support from 65.5 percent (control group) to 69.7 percent (competitiveness cue) (see Table 6.2).
Second, on the equality dimension and in keeping with the historical emphasis on education for society, Danish young people express stronger preferences for education connected to society and social solidarity than their British counterparts. More British students (89.7 percent) than Danish ones (77 percent) support additional spending on secondary education. But in Britain, 92 percent support education when told that “Education is important to fostering self-development,” while only 87 percent express support when told that “Education is important to fostering citizenship.” In Denmark, the “citizenship” cue bumps up support to 79 percent, but the “self-development” cue depresses it to 75 percent. Thus, the “citizenship” cue causes a 4.5 percent drop from the “self-development” cue in Britain, but elicits a 4.1 percent increase in Denmark. One Danish student longs for “Less competition and pressure. It shouldn’t be about being the highest educated, but about finding one’s place in society” (see Table 6.2).
Both groups of young people overwhelmingly support students’ right to choose their own educational programs; however, 98.6 percent of British students wish to preserve this right “even if society has a limited need for the skills developed by a program,” compared to 93.1 percent of Danish students. The Danish percentage may be elevated because many students express resentment about recent reforms restricting students’ right to pursue multiple upper-secondary educational programs. One respondent says of the restrictions on educational opportunities that “it is hard to know in advance [what one wishes to do with one’s life], and now it has become dangerous to choose.”
Majorities in both countries express concerns about inequities associated with class and British respondents (71 percent) are even more likely to perceive restricted opportunities for the working class to enter academic educational tracks than Danish ones (66.5 percent). This finding undoubtedly reflects the much higher levels of inequality in Britain than in Denmark.
Yet we note that NEETs in both countries are significantly less happy than those who completed upper-secondary, vocational programs. In Denmark, 77 percent of upper-secondary VET graduates are happy with their own skills compared to only 44 percent of young people who have who have not completed an educational track beyond lower-secondary education and are unemployed. In Britain, 70 percent of VET graduates are happy compared to 48 percent of British NEETs. Danish respondents overall (82 percent) are significantly more satisfied with the pace of their schooling than NEETs (65 percent). British respondents overall (78 percent) are happier with their pace than NEETs (60 percent). Danish NEETs (63 percent) have higher job satisfaction than British NEETs (44 percent), and more Danish NEETs (35 percent) have found jobs after school within six months than British NEETs (32 percent). Yet Danish NEETs expressed a level of unhappiness that suggests an alarming rising dualism threatening Scandinavian solidarity and hints at growing social isolation and economic vulnerability (see Table 6.2).
Third, on the governance dimension, British respondents are significantly more likely to support regulatory mechanisms for oversight than Danish ones, who generally support local autonomy. A significantly higher number of British young people (73 percent) support national control of curricula than Danish ones (57 percent), who prefer to retain control by teachers or schools. A significantly higher number of British youth (63 percent) also support linking funding to students’ test scores than Danish youth (48 percent) (see Table 6.2).
The cultural distinctions become particularly impressive when one factors in that while British students support educational choices predicted by the culture of their education regimes, they also complain about how these mechanisms have affected their own lives. Despite their greater support for regulations and standardization, significantly fewer British youth than Danish young people experience satisfaction with the pace and instructional style of their programs, as noted above. Whereas 35 percent of British students express a desire for more individualized teaching, only 19 percent of Danish students expressed this wish. As one British respondent puts it, “Teaching all kids the same thing should be criminal.” Danish students (77 percent) are more likely than British ones (70 percent) to feel that instructional topics help them develop life skills. Nearly twice as many Danish young people (21 percent) than British ones (11 percent) volunteer that they would not change anything about the system.
Conclusion: Cultural Contributions to Education Regimes
We live in a time of great social upheaval with a widening gap between economic haves and have-nots, fostered by deindustrialization, labor market disaggregation, growing inequality, neoliberalism, and the rise of right-wing populism. Deindustrialization has widened the gap between high and low-skill workers, and these groups benefit from different types of instruction. Educators must provide both sophisticated skills for workers in the knowledge economy, as well as more limited skills, pathways to employment, and some measure of equality for low-skill workers. Reformers face inequalities arising from uneven socioeconomic class advantages and those emanating from differences in academic competencies. Educational choices, informed by cultural assumptions, have ramifications for how nations achieve equality, social solidarity, social stability, and the collective capacities to cope with the traumas of the twenty-first century.
Britain and Denmark are struggling in familiar ways to address contemporary educational problems and in both countries, cultural values are shaping how policymakers balance efficiency and equality. Britain continues to value elite knowledge workers more than the working class; and despite their widespread claims to the contrary, policymakers have devoted few resources to the cultivation of vocational skills. In Denmark, the proper balance between educational goals of producing skills and fostering cultural formation for social solidarity was an important topic for debate throughout the nineteenth century. These goals continue to guide vocational education policymakers in their efforts to produce programs meeting the needs of workers of varying capacities. While authors no longer play the same role of building shared understandings of problems and solutions as they did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, policymakers’ educational choices resonate with lingering cultural frames.
These cultural frames have implications for the things we care about – economic growth, equality, and social solidarity. Despite recent concerns in Denmark that the vocational training system is not living up to its past performance, a system of multiple educational tracks works well for students who enter into high-skill (albeit increasingly under-populated) vocational programs. Denmark still does better than Britain at educating all the people, and this bolsters the capacity to sustain a commitment to both skill formation and socioeconomic equality.
A study of culture has bearing on the political economy of skill formation systems. Certainly, many factors shape policymakers’ choices: party politics, public opinion, bureaucratic capacities, social groups’ preferences and negotiating capabilities, and agency at critical junctures (Iversen and Stephens Reference Iversen and Stephens2008; Busemeyer et al. Reference Busemeyer, Garritzmann and Neimanns2020; Ansell and Gingrich Reference Ansell and Gingrich2013; Martin and Swank Reference Martin and Swank2012; Ansell and Lindvall Reference Ansell and Lindvall2013; Durazzi Reference Durazzi2020). Yet culture is like a subterranean river that underlies the political struggles and institutional impacts that shape specific policy outcomes. Cultural narratives inform ideas about the types of skills that are valued by a society and measures of equality. Cultural frames contribute to perceptions of institutional legitimacy and efficacy. While political struggles matter deeply to reform outcomes, the study of political contestation in a single domain may miss the unifying cultural themes that extend across policy areas. Familiar cultural assumptions about aspects of social investment are replicated across policy areas and these provide a backdrop to political struggles in diverse fields. Thus, cultural frames help us to understand why similar assumptions about marginal workers may be found in both education policy and welfare reforms (Martin and Chevalier Reference Martin and Chevalier2022). Moreover, cultural continuities are exceedingly robust. This work demonstrates that distinctive cultural depictions of education in British and Danish literature predate the institutional architecture of modern political economies – parties, unions, employers’ associations, and expanded suffrage – that influence twentieth and twenty-first-century policy choices. Just as public opinion has been shown to be important to contemporary policy choices (Busemeyer et al. Reference Busemeyer, Garritzmann and Neimanns2020), this book permits a glimpse into historical public opinion to better understand perceptions about education, skills, equality, and social solidarity.
British and Danish cultural formations also have implications for social renewal, as each country grapples with the anxieties of our century. British cultural frames have made neoliberalism particularly appealing: While neoliberal educational ideas have had some impact across the world, the individualist assumptions on which neoliberalism rests are deeply woven into the cultural fabric in the Anglo countries. Yet neoliberalism exacerbates status anxieties in the post-industrial economy. Neoliberalism shifts the goals of government from building society to helping the entrepreneurial individual and this ultimately intensifies social instability. The idea of meritocracy conveys the sense that inequality is fair; equality of opportunity justifies blaming the victim (Mijs Reference Mijs2019; Wilkinson and Pinkett Reference Wilkinson and Pickett2018). Populist parties on the right flourish because non-elites feel both excluded from economic gains and blamed by the meritocracy. Thus, while populist challenges threaten governance across Europe, a particularly nasty specimen of political discontent has taken hold among the English-speaking people.
Denmark faces its own set of challenges to sustaining social solidarity, and the most pressing of these is the intersection of ethnicity and marginality. The lowest level of Danish youth shut out of the happy social democratic heaven disproportionately includes children of immigrants, and truly disadvantaged Danish youth of all ilk are suffering (Fallesen Reference Fallesen2015; Jeon Reference Jeon2019, 12–14). The Danish radical right gained influence with nostalgic views of Danish society tied to cultural homogeneity; yet these narrow views of an ethnic-based society do a deep injustice to nineteenth-century conceptions of the organic society as inclusive and affirming.
This book suggests a reconceptualization of the social democratic model that resurrects the central focus on society and that allows the left to reclaim cultural territory from the right. Social democracy is often associated with a high regard for the important goal of economic equality; and indeed, this was an important rallying cry for the growth of Nordic welfare states throughout much of the twentieth century. Before equality, however, came a strong conception of society and the overarching commitment to society is what historically drove Danish investments in schooling. High socioeconomic equality has been a felicitous but fortuitous side effect of the mandate to imagine all the people. A conception of society, in which all citizens are given the support to make an economic and social contribution, was historically the secret ingredient of social harmony. Political renewal may well depend on reconceptualization of our collective social identities.
