ABSTRACT
This chapter starts from the premise that education and training institutions in countries with advanced economies face a common set of challenges that stem from the economic, political and sociocultural change that has occurred since the early 1970s. Economic restructuring and public-sector reform have dominated the politics of many Western democracies for two decades or more. Political debate throughout the English-speaking world has had less to do with alternative visions for the future than with the ability of parties to manage the process of change. Probert (1994), commenting on the Australian scene, suggests that micro-economic reform, the restructuring of outdated industrial awards, tariff reduction, flexibility, flexibility and yet more flexibility have become the icons of both major parties. Much the same can be said of new Labour in the United Kingdom and the Democratic administration in the United States, as both are nominally of ‘the left’ yet embrace the marketoriented stances of their more ‘right-wing’ predecessors. With modest variations, policy responses throughout the developed world are thus fairly consistent (Castells 1991).
