Being successful in the educational market: employers in practice of Swedish higher VET provision

ABSTRACT

Contemporary vocational education and training (VET), both initial and higher, is strongly market oriented, and governments shape systems with significant roles for employers. The study presented in this article aims at examining how employers are positioned in the practice of VET provision in such a system. Specifically, it recognises and interprets how employers are positioned in the provision of state-funded Swedish higher VET as expressions of relative power and control. The study was conducted using interviews with educational personnel and observations of meetings between employers and VET programme providers.

KEYWORDS:

• VET
• VET employer engagement
• market relevance in education
• school–industry relationships
• higher vocational education

Introduction

As one aspect of the global phenomenon of marketisation in education, contemporary policies for vocational education and training (VET) are strongly market oriented and governments shape systems with significant roles for employers (Avis 2012; Fejes, Runesdotter, and Wärvik 2016). The call for employer involvement in VET is significant, and the pressure on employers to engage is strong (Huddleston and Laczik 2018). There are also increasing numbers of vocational pathways beyond initial VET fashioned in line with the same trend; for instance, two-year ‘short-cycle’ higher education provisioned by universities, applied baccalaureates at community colleges, higher level and degree apprenticeships, or hybrid programmes combining vocational and academic education (Bathmaker 2017; Bathmaker et al. 2018). The formations of modern VET systems have been strongly tied to capitalist interest, and contemporary VET systems are described as existing and being reformed within a discourse of neoliberalism where systems are based on a focus on human capital development supporting economic growth (Avis 2012). It is argued that the same also might be true regarding diverse forms of higher education (Deuel 2021). The underlying ‘VET ideology’ of global policy actors, such as the World Bank, have been described as one where VET has the purpose of efficient and cost-effective skill acquisition and in which ‘the selection of training contents is determined by the skill demand of the labour market and should contribute to further economic growth’ (Barabasch and Petrick 2012, 130). Normative ideas of this instrumentalist approach assert that VET by definition should train graduates for specific jobs and thus ‘the education system needs to consider the expectations of the employment system, which in turn depends on the inputs from the education system for economic production’ (Bolli et al. 2018, 529–530). In this perspective the success of VET is contingent on relations ensuring that the education conforms to the skills demands of industry.

It has been argued that considerable current research on education focuses on ‘decentralisation, deregulation and new modalities of privatisation and marketisation, but [that] there is less focus on how these processes and policies are actually played out in education’ (Simons, Lundahl, and Serpieri 2013, 416) and that it would be beneficial to the research field if education–industry cooperation was examined also at decentralised levels (Emmenegger, Graf, and Trampusch 2019). This study, however, focuses on just that: examining employers in provision of programmes within one of these market-oriented VET systems. Specifically, the study aims to investigate how employers that cooperate with providers of Swedish publicly funded higher VET programmes are positioned in the practice of provision. This is investigated by observing meetings between involved actors and interviewing educational personnel to recognise and interpret how employers are positioned in the educational context of higher VET programmes, e.g. how they are talked about (also by themselves), what they are asked to do, what they do and how the parties interact with each other.

Employer involvement in VET – typologies, practices, and problems

The passing on of vocational knowledge and the training of workers for their jobs have historically been the task of masters in guilds or arranged in work. Today, vocational training is more often, at least in part, a matter of responsibility for national education systems. However, employer involvement is still widely recognised as a key factor in VET (e.g. Bolli et al. 2018; Higham and Farnsworth 2012; Hodgson et al. 2019). And within industries where employers have a hard time finding candidates with appropriate training, industry–school partnerships are giving rise to new opportunities for both students and employers (e.g. Lakes 2012; McGurk and Meredith 2018). Internationally, employer involvement in VET may take many different shapes. In the literature on VET and employer or industry relationships they are described as both informal practices and formal arrangements governed by policy. However, systems with strongly regulated forms of cooperation between VET and employers or industry are no guarantee of how they operate; the actual cooperation may in practice diverge from that in policy and regulation (Emmenegger, Graf, and Trampusch 2019). Whether informal or formal, the practices of employer involvement can be conceptualised, analysed, or measured from different perspectives.

In presenting a model for evaluating employer involvement Bolli et al. (2018) establish measurable aspects of what they call education–employment linkage. Aspects presented as important for qualitative employer involvement are the presence of work-based learning, high levels of actors representing the employers in school-based learning by sharing costs, providing equipment and teachers, and these actors providing expertise in evaluating examinations of students. Another important aspect is the relative decision-making power of actors from education and industry to define qualifications and forms for examination, and employers not only representing themselves in these processes but participating through an intermediary organisation. From this perspective, intermediary organisations improve the process of defining employers’ skills needs for qualifications, as they aggregate information from single employers. This is however questioned by others. Polesel et al. (2017) found clear tensions between what an Australian national skills council of a specific industry advocated as curricular content and the needs of local businesses cooperating with VET institutions. And in the British context, McGurk and Meredith (2018) found policy efforts to create a market-driven framework for meeting local labour market needs did not successfully engage with local industry. As a result, the associations of enterprises created – the intermediary organisations – had weak insight into the skills needs and priorities of local employers. Another perspective for examining school–employer cooperation focuses on the intensity of cooperation. Emmenegger, Graf and Trampusch (2019) define a typology with three classifications of cooperation: Information exchange – where schools and employers or industry share information on for instance availability of training places or the content of training for a common understanding, coordination – where actors adjust their practice and act differently from what they would have without cooperation, and collaboration – where actors engage in joint activity, working together to create mutual benefit. Initiatives for employer involvement can also be formed as partnerships. Partnerships are usually viewed as entailing shared responsibility, for both success and failure and as entailing common goals for all involved actors (Pillay et al. 2014). Merely buying, or in some other way obtaining, a service from another actor is not viewed as a partnership. It has been suggested that relationships between school and industry would improve if partnership principles were applied in the implementation and management of cooperation. Pillay et al. (2014) found that partnerships in an Australian initiative were not sustainable as they were barely maintained by individuals, and these individuals had restricted structures for support.

Initiatives and reforms to meet skills shortages and to support local businesses in their competitiveness through increased employer involvement in VET are emerging globally. In one case, Lakes (2012) describes a model where post-secondary schools, colleges and universities in the USA are charged with the task of coordinating efforts for workforce and economic development in what is called state sector strategies. As part of these strategies, VET institutions are matched directly to industry clusters, bringing public and private stakeholders together in the provision of education to up-skill the workforce. The training was, just like Swedish higher VET (Köpsén 2022a), based on short-term goals answering needs that are foreseeable in the immediate future. These types of initiatives stem from a desire in neoliberal governing to minimise public cost and the belief that excessive bureaucratic regulation is detrimental to the competitiveness of business (Lakes 2012).

As these global neoliberal education policies urge employers to engage in VET the question of to what extent employers can fulfil wishes and expectations in policy may be raised. For instance, the development of qualifications or curricula is raised as an example where employers’ knowledge and experience do not match the task that they are charged with by policy (Huddleston and Laczik 2018; Young 2006). Also, employers are dependent on economic circumstances. Private companies are driven by profit and must weigh costs vs benefits (Emmenegger, Graf, and Trampusch 2019) and employers in public sectors must adhere to politically controlled budgets. Times of economic constraints may limit the possibilities and motivation for both public and private employers to cooperate with VET institutions (Huddleston and Laczik 2018; Rusten and Hermelin 2017). These problems raised about robustness of cooperation pertain not only to employers but also to educational organisations. With greater presence of marketisation in VET systems, it is not only the employers’ actions that are steered by market-oriented objectives. Educational organisations in competitive educational systems where providers compete for market share, as in Swedish higher VET (Köpsén 2022a), may also act based on economic factors and for the survival of the organisation (Emmenegger, Graf, and Trampusch 2019). In the American instance of state sector strategies, Lakes (2012) found that public community colleges had to become entrepreneurial with market-driven goals because of rising competition from for-profit VET institutions. In Sweden, likewise, public providers of compensatory adult education have had to adjust their behaviour in line with a competitive culture since its provision has become increasingly marketised and the number of private providers has rocketed (Fejes, Runesdotter, and Wärvik 2016; Holmqvist, Fejes, and Nylander 2020). As suggested by Pillay et al. (2014), the cooperation of schools and employers or industry may also be dependent on individuals. This makes employers’ involvement in VET vulnerable to changes in staff. The informality of partnerships not supported by structures but dependent on individuals also makes the processes of cooperation harder to monitor and evaluate. However, the abilities of individuals to foster partnerships and cooperation are important. Thus, for instance, Polesel et al. (2017) have advocated for a balance between regulated processes and flexibility in systems allowing individuals room to create and maintain partnerships based on personal relationships.

Swedish Higher Vocational Education

In this article, employer involvement in VET is investigated in the case of the Swedish system of continuing VET, Higher Vocational Education (HVE). The HVE system was established in 2009 and was formed in line with neoliberal ideas of market relevance and employer influence (Köpsén 2020, 2022a). Though, in line with a longstanding Swedish educational policy paradigm, it is publicly funded and free of charge for students who universally qualify for student aid just like all Swedish university students do. Yet, the HVE system is separate from academic and professional higher education in universities. The providers are, with a few exceptions, not providers of other more traditional forms of Swedish post-secondary or tertiary education. There is also a separate and not transferable credit system. A limited number of programmes receive funding each year. These are the programmes where the providers can demonstrate the highest level of hiring needs pledged by employers and the highest level of co-funding from local business and industry. Providers are only granted funding for and permission to enrol the number of students that the pledged hiring needs indicate are necessary. Thus, there is a fast turnover in the programmes offered. Both public and private education providers compete within this system. However most providers, 57%, are private and 73% of study places are in programmes provisioned by private providers (National Agency for Higher Vocational Education 2021). The programmes are offered at levels 5 and 6 in the European Qualifications Framework and graduates are awarded a corresponding diploma. If a programme is offered at level 6 it must include a minimum of 25% work-based learning in placements, but all programmes may include this form of learning. The programmes are between 20 weeks and three years. The programmes may be offered full-time or part-time, in school or as distance learning. The median age of HVE students is 30 and many have experience from working life and/or higher education. Looking at students who graduated in 2019, 87% are employed a year after, 55% of which in an organisation where they undertook work-based learning. 77% of the graduates were employed before enrolling and 17% of the graduates were still working with the same employer as before their training (National Agency for Higher Vocational Education 2021).

HVE programmes are to be initiated locally by employers and meet their needs for trained workers. Thus, employers play an important part in the start of new programmes and the education providers are dependent on them to successfully compete with other providers to start programmes (Köpsén 2022a). Once a programme is up and running, the most salient form of institutionalised employer involvement is the requirement that they make up the majority on what are called management boards, which direct each programme (SFS 2009:130). The National Agency for Higher Vocational Education advocates that the chair of the board is an employer representative, however this is not a regulation (National Agency for Higher Vocational Education, 2011). A programme manager, by regulation responsible for leading the day-to-day work on the programme and for ensuring that the programme is continuously developed, represents the education provider on the management board (SFS 2009:130). Other members of these boards represent the students, the public school system and, where the programme offers the higher of the two diplomas, a university.

The study

The qualitative approach of this study combines interviews with programme managers, observations of management board meetings and a theoretically guided thematic analysis described in the next section.

The selection of programmes was done purposively to find five programmes that could provide broad input through breadth in the range of studied contexts. In line with a multisite qualitative research approach, these five programmes vary in key characteristics, described below. These characteristics are relevant to the theoretical framework but are also significant attributes of educational contexts in a broader sense. The selection of breadth in the range of studied contexts and the theoretical relevance of selection criteria in this approach aim to enable analytical extrapolation and recognition of patterns for readers, scientists as well as practitioners within (higher) VET provision, but not generalisation (Firestone 1993; Larsson 2009).

One characteristic of theoretical relevance that was used to create diversity is field of study. Fields of study have different traditions and norms regarding how education is carried out, how its goals are formulated and what type of knowledge outcomes make up the curricula (Bernstein 1990, 2000; Young 2006). The programmes are classified as health and social work, as finance, administration, and sales, and as construction – fields with different traditions for knowledge transfer/education. Another characteristic considered is the type of education provider. What type of organisation provides a programme impacts what actors are involved and on what basis they act. A public provider situated within a politically governed municipal organisation has considerations to make that are different from those of for instance a for-profit corporation where there are other interests at play. The five investigated programmes are provisioned by three different types of education providers. The providers may be classified either as a private education corporation, a public adult education provider, or an organisation situated within Sweden’s relatively extensive system of non-formal adult education. Yet another criterion was geographical. The programmes are in different regions of Sweden, and they are found in what can be described as different types of labour market contexts dependent on the size and location of the town/city they are in. Considering this circumstance gives a selection of studied contexts where labour market conditions are different.

Five observations of management board meetings were carried out. One in each of the five programmes. The observations, lasting around two hours each, were documented in field notes taken in the meetings. These notes were taken down in line with ideas found in the fieldwork tradition, recording not only the content, actions, and articulations in the meetings but also my initial interpretations and theoretical analysis. The observations had a low level of structure, focusing on the content of the conversation and the roles of the participants. These were employer and student representatives, programme managers and in some meetings, but not all, there were also representatives from universities. In one observation there was also a teacher working on courses in the programme present. Some representatives participated via telephone or videoconference. The number of participants in each meeting was between 5 and 15, not including me, the observer, who did not participate in discussions. Observations of management board meetings were chosen as an approach as these gatherings are formally regulated meetings between employer representatives and education providers occurring in all HVE programmes (SFS 2009:130). Also, semi-structured interviews were carried out with each of the programme managers. The interviews varied between 40 and 75 min. They focused on course syllabi and their creation and on the responsibilities of different stakeholders in provision of HVE, for instance on the interviewees’ notion of their role as programme managers and the function of employer representatives in the programmes.

Theoretical framework and analysis

In this study, employers involvement in provision of VET is analysed from a perspective based on Bernsteinian theory and the analysis examines the positionings of employers in programme provision as expressions of power and control. Recognition of these not directly observable or obvious relations is mediated by two main concepts, recontextualising agents and imagined pedagogic identities, (Bernstein 1990, 2000).

The two concepts are found in Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device (Bernstein 1990, 2000). The pedagogic device is a theoretical model of how generative principles of power and control shape education and its role in society. An underpinning of the analysis in this study is that Swedish HVE is considered as a pedagogic device in which the what and how of education is recontextualised by agents into pedagogic discourse. The usefulness of this theoretical conceptualisation of education has been argued for both in general (e.g. Singh 2002; Singh, Thomas, and Harris 2013) and specifically related to VET (Wheelahan 2005, 2015).

Pedagogic discourses are defined by recontextualising agents in recontextualising fields (Bernstein 1990, 2000). Actions of recontextualising agents are based on, and restricted by, their social positions, power, interests, traditions, and history as well as their knowledge. A pedagogic device entails two types of recontextualising fields. An official recontextualising field where legislation and policy are fashioned and pedagogic recontextualising fields in more direct connection to provision of education. The official recontextualising field of HVE is not the focus of this study, but has been investigated previously (Köpsén 2020, 2022a). The collection of data in this study should be understood as examining pedagogic recontextualising fields of HVE programmes. Recontextualising agents in these local contexts of HVE programmes are the representatives on the management boards, the education providers, and others, such as supervisors for work-based learning.

Pedagogic discourses given specific meaning in the recontextualising fields comprise both instructional discourses of specialised knowledge, the what of education, and a moral regulative discourse of social order, the how (Bernstein 1990; Singh, Thomas, and Harris 2013). The regulative discourse is dominant. It determines not only the organisation of subjects and their sequencing and pacing. It also regulates the theory of instruction which entails ideas of, or models for, students and teachers as well as of pedagogic contexts (Bernstein 2000). Bernstein named these models imagined pedagogic identities and describes them as projections of the bias and focus of the prevailing order in policy struggles. Identities for students, teachers and pedagogic contexts are thus discursively constructed by policy actors (Singh, Thomas, and Harris 2013). Bernstein (2000) labels one such type of identity as a ‘market identity’. This identity is based on the bias towards, and focus on, pedagogic practice to optimise the exchange value of its product in a market and is characterised by the autonomy that is necessary to respond directly to the market and be competitive. The market identity represents a focus on the short term, in what Bernstein describes as a ‘culture and context to facilitate the survival of the fittest as judged by market demands’ (2000, 69), which installs a competitive enterprise culture within the management and provision of education.

In the analysis, what employers ‘do’ and are ‘used for’ in the programmes alongside topics brought up for discussions and decisions in management board meetings have been key aspects for understanding how employers are positioned in these contexts. All articulations relating to employers or business and industry were excerpted from transcripts of the interviews. These excerpts were then analysed together with the field notes from the observations. This material has been coded in a theoretically guided thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006), where the theoretical concepts of recontextualising agents and pedagogic identities generated themes denoting how employers are positioned in these contexts of higher VET provision. The scaffolding of the practical operations in the analytical process were the guidelines for thematic analysis presented by Braun and Clarke (2006). These consist of six steps: (1) familiarising with the data, (2) generating codes, (3) searching for themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) defining and naming themes and (6) producing reports (87). The analytical process was iterative and went back and forth between steps 2 and 5.

This process resulted in several codes which then could be thematically grouped in relation to the two main concepts. This resulted in three themes/key positionings of employers; as the experts with knowledge, as the ones whose needs are to be met and as an asset to the programme.

Findings: employers in HVE practice

This study has found that employers in provision of HVE are positioned as powerful recontextualising agents in the formation and management of programmes, as judges of the market value of the outcome of training – the students – and as support for the providers in a competitive training market. A common denominator for all three of these key positionings is that there is an imbalance in relative power between education providers and the employers, in favour of the employers. Expressions of these positionings are consequent in interviews with programme managers and in observations of management board meetings.

The experts with knowledge – employers as powerful recontextualising agents

Throughout the analysed material examples show how the employers are positioned as experts with knowledge. The following quote from a programme manager shows how they view the up-to-date knowledge of employers as a necessity:

We need them [the employers] involved, they are up to date. They approve our syllabus and literature. And I ask them: ‘We have these books now. Is there any new literature? Should we make any changes? What do you recommend?’ (Interview in programme 1)

This programme manager explained how in the management board meetings they regularly inquire about for instance the literature used in the programme. Through actions like these the employers are given influence over the content of training. That is, they are positioned as recontextualising agents. Another example of the employers being positioned as experts, and recontextualising agents, is when a course was brought up in a management board meeting:

A course on coding had previously been raised as problematic by the students. They didn’t think the content was connected enough to economics. There was a brief discussion, where both student and employer representatives were active. It was decided that the programme manager should work together with one of the employer representatives on the board to make suggestions for changes of the course syllabus for this course and possibly also another closely related course. (Observation in programme 2)

However, when interviewed the programme manager explained:

When I went ahead with it and started in-depth interviewing one of the representatives on the management board, we concluded that it is not possible to change the content of the courses. (Interview in programme 2)

The employers are considered, and treated as, experts of the knowledge in their field. In this case, it is exemplified as the programme manager interviews an employer representative in-depth about what knowledge is used in practice, and based on an understanding from that conversation, they did not change the syllabus. The positioning of employers as experts is also visible in how the programme managers contrastingly are responsible for formatting and fitting the knowledge selected by the experts into the bureaucratic framework of the HVE system, here called ‘the box’:

I usually think like this: The employers know what they [the students] should know, and I’ll put it in the HVE’s box. I need to know what the HVE box looks like, and I must take the employers’ ideas and force them into that box. That’s my role. And if I don’t have that dialogue with anyone on the management board, then the content of the box isn’t relevant. (Interview in programme 2)

‘Forcing it into the box’ is a recontextualising action by the programme manager, which is part of the process of establishing pedagogic discourse for their HVE programme. However, the programme manager is not the agent who defines what the students need to know, i.e. the one who selects what discourse to recontextualise into pedagogic discourse. This is the task of employers, the experts, whilst the responsibility for bureaucratic adaptation lands with the provider. This showcases the difference in power between these two types of agents in the pedagogic recontextualising fields of HVE. They are both acting as agents, but the employers are positioned as the experts selecting knowledge to make up curricula and the provider is tasked with realising this training within the organisational framework of HVE.

The ones whose needs are to be met – employers as judges of market value

The employers are being positioned as the ones whose needs are to be met in a relation of supply and demand clearly in line with a market-oriented pedagogic identity for the local contexts of programme provision. The programme managers described how they constantly relate their work to the employers and how the employers are the main counterpart in the provision of training. The relation of supply and demand is expressed by a programme manager talking on their efforts to cooperate with employers:

Programme manager:

I think we have good relationships. I’m sure we could work a lot more on it. But the thing is, you need to prioritise where to put in your effort. And because we get people their placements for work-based learning and have pretty good … very, very good employment rates … 

Interviewer:

They [the students] get jobs?

Programme manager:

Well, I don’t know how many there were last time. But it was 93% or something like that. (Interview in programme 5)

The reason for this programme manager not to put even more effort into cooperation with employers is directly related to the rate at which students are employed after graduation. This line of reasoning, where a high number of employed students are used to mediate not working more to involve the employers showcases that the reason for cooperation is making sure students get hired. i.e. that they are valuable products in the market. If they are, the programme manager does not prioritise working harder to cooperate with employers since their needs seem to be met.

One important aspect of the positioning of employers as the ones whose needs are to be met is that the employers are expected to define their needs. For the providers to produce a product with exchange value in the market, buyer specifications are imperative. One programme manager, in a description of their last management board meeting, mentions a point on the agenda that was on the agendas of all observed management board meetings:

Programme manager:

There was a lot of talk about course content, trends, and stuff like that.

Interviewer:

To develop course syllabi? That’s exciting!

Programme manager:

Yes, new trends, which we’ll incorporate into the curricula, and stuff like that.

Interviewer:

And the industry is actively engaged? New things are raised by them right away?

Programme manager:

Yes, during the ‘Trends in the industry’ point on the agenda. They raise trends and give their input. (Interview in programme 3)

The programme manager is talking about a standing point in of all their management board meetings. An item called ‘Trends in the industry’, during which all the employer representatives present have a chance to speak on their employment needs and their wishes for renewal of curricula. That the employers are expected to define their needs is evident also in the raising of problems when the employers are unclear on what they want:

I sometimes think that a big employer, such as this one, is a difficult organisation to work with. It is so big; one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing. It can be difficult to get a clear answer sometimes, and I have drawn some blanks a few times. You ask one person, and you get one answer, and then you ask someone else, and you get another answer, you ask another, who asks someone else, who finally asks me! Me, the one initially doing the asking. It’s a little unclear what they want sometimes. (Interview in programme 2)

This positioning of employers as the ones whose needs are to be met showcases the HVE programmes as pedagogic contexts discursively defined by a market-oriented pedagogic identity where the relationship between providers and employers is one of supply and demand. Employers are positioned as someone that the provider must consider because they are the ones who will or will not hire the students. That is, the employers are the ones deciding if a provider is competitive and producing a product with exchange value in the market – the raison d’etre of an education provider in such a competitive market context.

An asset to the programme – employers as necessary support in a competitive market

The local contexts of programme provision may be understood as set within the market identity and examples show how the management is in line with a competitive and market-oriented enterprise culture. One example is that employers can be important assets in marketing. In one of the observed management board meetings a great part of the time was spent on the provider soliciting help from employers to create marketing material:

‘I need your help here!’. The programme manager is asking the three employer representatives who are present to give quotes to use in marketing. The programme manager wants quotes that say that these companies will hire someone if they complete the programme. The programme manager wants to use the company names, and every suggestion for quotes the employer representatives give are embellished. The employer representatives seem reluctant that they and their company names are to play such a big role in marketing, and especially with quotes ‘giving promises we can’t be sure to keep’. They negotiate the quotes written down by the meeting secretary back to more of what they first suggested – more general statements describing the occupation rather than statements on employment. (Observation in programme 3)

The employers are positioned as an asset to the programmes in the sense that providers need the employers support in a competitive environment. In this case, the programme manager wishes to benefit from the support of the employers to attract students and strengthen the programme’s competitiveness in two ways. Firstly, by portraying good prospects for getting a job and secondly, by using the name recognition of the well-known companies. These two examples show how the employers may be used as an asset, not only to facilitate provision of the programme, but to strengthen the position of the provider in the competitive training market. It seems that the providers need the employers to be successful. This showcases that there is a competitive enterprise culture in line with a market-oriented pedagogic identity.

This positioning of employers as an asset is also demonstrated by employers being asked to help solve problems where industry relations are needed. Their networks provide support for the provision of training. This regards several aspects. One programme manager talked about how they and the chairman of the management board work together to get more employers to take on students for work-based learning:

We’ve invited these guys [other employers]. The chairman and I went out for lunch with them. At that lunch the chairman spoke about the importance of taking on students for their placements. He spoke about how it is good for the company and that it doesn’t take that much time and effort, if you are prepared. ‘The only thing you need for them [the students] is a desk and a computer, and someone to meet up with them the first day’. (Interview in programme 4)

The following example shows how the employers provide support regarding people teaching on the programmes. But it also shows that the choice of cooperating lies with the employers:

I change teachers almost every year on that course, where I hire a practitioner as a teacher for six months. It’s hard to get the same person to leave their regular job repeatedly. So, I change teachers all the time. And it’s hard to get the employers to let go of someone because they need them so much. (Interview in programme 2)

These relations of power and control are also visible in the following situation, where only one representative on the management board answered an email from the provider:

Just recently, we sent out a request via email that we wanted them [the employers on the board] to respond to. Only one of them has answered! But that’s why we have a management board! They should do something in return for that free lunch they get at our meetings! (Interview in programme 4)

The frustration and disappointment expressed here by a programme manager is a reaction to when the employers don’t support the programme. The employers are positioned as an asset, but they have the discretion to choose to assist the provider or not. This makes the imbalance in power relations between providers and employers clearly visible.

Discussion

This study has investigated how employers cooperating with Swedish publicly funded higher VET are positioned in the educational context and work with provision of programmes. The study found that the involved employers are powerful agents in the pedagogic recontextualising fields shaping the pedagogic discourse of the programmes, i.e. employers hold great power and control over the what and how of training in the publicly funded Swedish system of higher VET. The study also found several examples of how the pedagogic contexts follow the model of a market oriented imagined pedagogic identity. This was visible in the short-term focus on the exchange value of the product – the students – in a market where the providers (sellers) aim to please the employers (buyers). The focus on employability in Swedish VET has been described as ‘an imagination in which all students are first to be made employable or entrepreneurs, with understanding their citizenship and questions of equality for the most part relegated to the background’ (Lappalainen, Nylund, and Rosvall 2019, 348). This imagined pedagogic identity supresses other possible identities, for instance an imagination of education as a tool for equality manifest in the previous Swedish educational paradigm of the twentieth century. The market oriented imagined pedagogic identity was also visible in the imbalance in relative power between education providers and the employers. The relationship between the two may be described as dependency, where providers are dependent on employers. It is the needs of employers which provide the raison d’etre for providers in the market logic of this pedagogic identity. This is not a surprising result recognising that Bernstein (2000) defined this identity in relation to contemporaneous policy struggles as neoliberal educational policy was developing as hegemonic across the world (Avis 2012). These findings also exemplify that the power and control placed with employers by policy essentially come to be realised completely in line with the intentions in policy in practice in local contexts of provision. This study thus also enforces previously raised concerns regarding Swedish HVE in relation to how employer-driven VET may lock students into pre-defined positions in local labour markets (Köpsén 2020, 2022a). This is a lock in effect suppressing the possibility for equality of opportunity and social mobility when participation in higher education is widened through the creation of distinctly vocational pathways. This is a phenomenon of differentiation which critical research has questioned also in other versions of vocational higher education emerging globally (Bathmaker 2017).

Using the model of Bolli et al. (2018) the positioning of employers may be described as presenting high levels of education–employment linkage. There are high levels of actors representing the employers in school-based learning and the relative decision-making power of actors from education and industry to define qualifications favours the employers as they are positioned as both the experts with knowledge and as the ones whose demands are to be met. However, in the context of Swedish higher VET the employers only represent themselves in these processes and there is no participation through intermediary organisations which, from the perspective of Bolli et al. (2018), improve the process of defining employers’ skills needs for qualifications, as they aggregate information from single employers.

Using the typologies of Emmenegger, Graf, and Trampusch (2019), the employer involvement in HVE could be characterised as collaboration. The involvement goes beyond what they describe as information exchange and coordination, as in many respects the providers and employers engage in joint activity, working together to create benefit for both parties. However, the showcased discretion of employers to limit their contributions indicates that the collaboration is not fully a partnership when that is defined as entailing shared responsibility for both success and failure (Pillay et al. 2014). Personal relationships and the abilities of individuals to foster partnerships and cooperation have been presented as important (Polesel et al. 2017). In HVE, programme managers’ relationships with industry have been shown to vary (Köpsén 2022b) and using the relationships that employers possess may compensate for lack of extended/broad relationships and the ability of providers to create and foster networks. This dependency on employers to be successful in the market is the same for all providers in this study, both public and private.

In line with a globalised conception of the role of VET as developing the human capital required by a dynamic and forward-moving economy, and the converging international policies (Avis 2012), HVE is meant to increase employer involvement in VET to meet skills shortages and to support local businesses in their competitiveness. In this national system of publicly funded VET programmes, in a country which previously have had a strong paradigm of nationally controlled VET, the passing on of vocational knowledge and the training of workers has in large part become the responsibility of actors in a market. The Swedish twentieth-century national educational paradigm has strongly opposed VET being locally differentiated and directly related to the local labour market or specific employers (Olofsson and Persson Thunqvist 2018). Yet, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, in line with globally spreading neoliberal hegemony, it was not only the provision of training which became controlled by market forces, but also the responsibility to recognise and meet the skills supply to secure global competitiveness was placed in this market. A market where stakeholders act in line with capitalist goals for the survival and prosperity of their own organisation. Just like public providers in Swedish municipal adult education (Fejes, Runesdotter, and Wärvik 2016; Holmqvist, Fejes, and Nylander 2020), the public education providers of HVE, must adjust their behaviour in line with a competitive culture to even have a chance at providing education, to take a strategic responsibility for skills supply or to provide qualitative education and training giving possibilities to the members of their own communities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).