Evaluation of the Industry Programme and the Industrial Vocational College

Over the past decade, a new policy field has emerged in Norway at the intersection of education and working life: "competence policy" (kompetansepolitikken). Broadly, the aims of competence policy are to preserve a labour market characterised by productivity, low unemployment, and equal opportunities, in the face of "megatrends" such as immigration, an ageing population, and the green and digital transition. These ambitions are pursued through a range of initiatives, each with more narrowly defined objectives.

This project will evaluate two of these initiatives: the grant schemes Tripartite Industry Programme for Competence Development and the Industrial Vocational College. The project will map and evaluate the organisation and resource utilisation of each grant scheme individually, and carry out a comparison between them.

The Industrial Vocational College and the Industry Programme both stem from competence policy, and are concrete expressions of a wish to develop a broader range of short, work-relevant courses and educational offerings tailored to workers in full-time employment. An educational offering closely aligned with the needs of working life, consisting of small learning units, is assumed to increase participation because it lowers the threshold for taking part. The target group for this type of initiative is mainly workers with little or no prior formal education - a group that generally has low participation in training and education to begin with.

The two grant schemes share some fundamental similarities, not least in that they are both organised as a tripartite collaboration between the state and the collective actors in working life. The target group of the Industrial Vocational College overlaps with the target group of one of the largest and most enduring industry programmes; the industry and construction sector. At the same time, the two grant schemes represent different ways of organising the tripartite collaboration within competence policy. While the Industry Programme encompasses both formal and non-formal training at various levels, the Industrial Vocational College only offers credit-bearing courses at public vocational colleges.