Abstract:

The paper looks at the growth in T-VET education in Norway during the last 5 years and attempts to predict what role the T-VET education will play in 2030 both compared with the traditional Higer Educational Institution (HEI) sector, and as a supplier to the workforce.

The analysis is based on official documents and statistics.

There are several parameters that are interesting, like:
Who the students are, i.e. first time students or adult learners; private vs public educational institutions; the extent to which courses are customized to the students (online learning, hybrid or classroom based); financing and funding - both institutional funding as well as student loans; different types of education, with a special focus on information technology (IT) and technical training; the role of the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) as quality assurance (QA) institution. The use of European Qualification Framework (EQF) and its Norwegian equivalent, NKR for classification; not only for each course, but also for defining the institutions; the length of the studies; the status and uptake of the students by employers in the Labor market. Some comparisons are also drawn against other Nordic countries.

Keywords:

Norwegian and European Educational Policy, T-VET, EQF, Education and the Labor market.