The roles of evaluation for vocational education and training
N. Grubb and P. Ryan
Abstract
It is commonly believed that investment in vocational education and training is worthwhile as it benefits individuals, enterprises and societies at large. Nevertheless, precise returns to such training are difficult to demonstrate and scattered evaluations present disparate results. As a consequence of a variety of problems involved in rigorous evaluation, there exists a risk that investments in human resources development, however needed, may lag behind investments with more tangible results; alternatively, such investments may be based on mistaken analysis.
It is often argued, for example, that cost-benefit analysis, a relatively common evaluation method, fails to capture all the effects of training and, therefore, typically reaches wrong conclusions; the focus tends to be on measurable economic outcomes, such as life-time earnings, while a range of social benefits that may be associated with training are underestimated.
The ILO's Training Policies and Systems Branch has recently engaged in a thorough review of the theory and practice of the evaluation of vocational education and training (VET). Two short-term staff, W. Norton Grubb, of the University of California, Berkeley, and Paul Ryan, of the University of Cambridge, started from the premise that some plain talk is needed about the subject. Having devoted an introductory chapter of their forthcoming book to conceptual issues, they focus on the why and how of evaluation before presenting and judging the results of available evaluations. Two concluding chapters treat the use and abuse of evaluation results in policy-making and the implications for evaluation of recent trends and issues in VET, such as decentralization, a declining role for the State, a shift towards work-based learning and a continued concern for meeting equity concerns through vocational education and training.
Updated by JB. Approved by PA. Last update: 4 May 2000.
