Building Bridges Between Higher Education, Vocational Learning and Employment: Fostering a Sustainable Ecosystem through Practically Based Higher Education (HE) Models

The Higher Education (HE) sector in England demonstrates a tendency of diversification of their provision, specifically through developing strategies to integrate academic and workplace learning. The paper aims to consider a case study of practically-based higher education in a higher education institution in England, as an example of an industry engaged model of higher education which combines academic and practical learning, through cross-disciplinary contextually relevant curricula. The paper report on the research in progress hence findings at this stage are preliminary and speculative. This paper will specifically focus on the contextual analysis of the case study.  The findings indicate that the cross-over between academic studies and practical experiences involves continuous stakeholder collaboration, aiming to foster a deep understanding of student skills and expertise such that they are able to meet unknown challenges in the context of a constantly changing world of work.