ABSTRACT
In modern societies, where virtually all young people remain in school throughout their adolescent years, educational organizations are forced to deal with a student population differing in ability, in motivation to learn, and in the amount and quality of acquired knowledge and skills. Historically, vocational education emerged mainly in response to the economic needs of modernizing societies for technological expertise. Since the mid-1980s, vocational education has more or less run its course in providing universal opportunities for secondary education. The egalitarian philosophy thus pulls in the direction of undifferentiated, heterogeneous education units, and the social excellence philosophy in the direction of differentiated, homogeneous educational units. Vocational education can thus be seen as an "easy" organizational solution for students who had been placed in low-ability groups in elementary school, even though it often neither represents their own choices nor offers many of them meaningful training for their future lives.
