The Internationalisation of VET: German VET Providers Abroad –Transfer vs. Pragmatism?

Germany has a strong VET system, which is commonly seen as a key factor explaining its persistently low youth unemployment rate, high productivity and social cohesion. Many countries across the globe have therefore expressed their interest in establishing a similar system. At the same time, German commercial VET providers are not very active on international markets, compared with their counterparts of English-speaking countries. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) therefore launched a program for the “internationalisation of VET” which tries to combine export promotion with the promotion of the dual VET system, as it has traditionally been pursued in the context of German development cooperation. This paper sets out to explore the ideological and theoretical premises of this program. Furthermore, it examines how these premises are reflected in the design of the funded projects and whether and how the projects, once they have started to be implemented, adapt their plans to the context of the targeted country.