ABSTRACT
To compare capacities of specific educational levels authors will employ lenses that can discern contours from great elevations, and others that can observe how cohorts of students are being streamed in diverse kinds of credential programs. In this way they will be scrutinizing the implications of their analysis of German, Japanese, and Swiss educational growth and change by comparing patterns among the three cases, but also with those of other OECD countries. One precursor for the German-Swiss dissimilarity becomes apparent when one recognizes a parallel between late nineteenth-century changes in the structure of economic interest.groups and educational policy networks. Whereas the weaker German and Swiss national education agencies have to share jurisdiction for the dual system sector with economic ministries and business interests, the Japanese ministry has not had to interact as directly with a bureaucratic rival. For secondary education the German 1991 per capita figure is higher than that for any other listed country, including the US and Japan.
