< Summary >
1. Overview of the Project
Asian Development Bank (ADB) is implementing a technical assistant project
“Education and Skills for Inclusive Growth and Green Jobs: TA-7879-REG” to support education and skills in four Asian DMCs (developing member countries), India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka. This project aims at sharing Korea’s best practices in skill development policies and providing consulting to help these countries establish better skills development policies. To achieve this goal, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance of Korea, and the Export-Import Bank of Korea are executing KSP-ADB Joint Consulting Program to support TA-7879-REG by providing case study of Korea. The Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training (KRIVET) is implementing the case study of Korea to contribute to ADB’s effort to develop the TVET (Technical and Vocational Education &
Training) policies in the DMCs by sharing the best practices of Korea in the field of industry-academia partnership and green industries.
This project consists of the following three tasks: first, to carry out a research on Korean policies to introduce best practices of policies in industry-academia partnership, in skill development for green jobs, and skill development for women; second, to organize a
‘Knowledge Sharing Visit to Korea’ for the government officials and field experts in the Asian DMCs, who will visit various kinds of institutions that are practicing these policies in the field of green skill development and in industry-academia partnership; and, third, to co- organize a ‘Skills Forum’ to share the result of policy research with experts from developed countries and developing countries.
2. Research on Korea’s Best Practices
The case studies of industry-academia partnership (IAP) policies and TVET policies for green jobs and female workforce are conducted in Korea. Those policies were selected that are most recently introduced, proved to be best, and likely to have implications for the
Asian DMCs.
Three cases of policy areas of industry-academia partnerships with the goal to facilitate skills development are selected and analyzed based on the three skill levels; high-school level, junior college level, and university level. In policy areas of skills development for green jobs, the cases that are proven to be the best examples in the areas have been chosen.
Cases are taken at different education levels and also from TVET policies for private training institutions. Also cases of female skills development are included at school level and at continuing vocational training (CVT) level.
Policies of Skills Development and Industry-Academia Partnership
Historically, the bases for industry-academia partnership in Korea have been rather weak and often criticized due to the gap between the skills obtained at schools and those required at work. As a result, what students learned at schools had little relevance at the workplaces. The situation was not much better for vocational educational institutions than for general educational institutions. When the graduates of schools enter the job market, the diplomas and academic degrees they obtained at schools are recognized only as 'credentials' rather than as 'qualifications' that prove labor-market effective. Overall, educational credentials were only the screening factor in the job market, which revealed lack of cooperation between education institutions and workplaces.
Also, the linkage between educational institutions and industries had been mainly initiated by the government in Korea. In periods of rapid economic growth, 1960s~1980s, the government usually led economic development, made plans for supplying the labor force, and requested educational institutions to implement the government plans.
Afterwards educational institutions implemented the plans and connected the plans to employment. Meanwhile, industries mainly focused on utilizing the labor force whose development was planned by the government and implemented by schools, thus the voluntary cooperation between educational institutions and industries has not been strong.
However, since the 1990s, the government-led system has been weakened, on the other hand, the necessity for the autonomous cooperation between industries and schools was emphasized. Mostly industries had too much pressure for competition in the global economy to act proactively on industry-academia partnership. However, there have been some companies which were proactively investing in industry-academia cooperation. Some
large corporations have been cooperating with certain educational institutions in order to produce specialized labor force in specific areas.
Nevertheless, industry-academia partnerships in Korea still relied on effort of an individual school to induce partnership with individual companies, where collective participation of industries was lacking. Even though there were some industries endeavoring after collective cooperation by establishing sector councils the general tradition and culture was not favorable to establish a collective connection system. Thus characteristics of industry-academia partnership in Korea were skill school-led.
Recently, the government started to set up more proactive policies to revitalize industry- academia cooperation. The meister high school policy and LINC (Leaders in Industry- University Cooperation) projects are the most representative and recent policies. The LINC project for vocational colleges focuses on developing skills directly, whereas LINC for universities focuses more on developing talents to support R&D for industries. To support industry-academia cooperation system, related laws have been established. Also Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education & Training is in charge of providing support and management for meister high schools, and, the Korea Research Foundation is for LINC projects.
The central government still takes a role of establishing the overall strategies and recruits educational institutes as recipients for support, and then educational institutes apply to be selected for the project. In this process, educational institutions persuade related industries themselves to participate as partners. Therefore, the characteristic of the project is still quite central and led by educational institutions. The challenges include enhancing the willingness of corporations to participate in the partnership to implement long-term investments into developing manpower amidst the intensifying global competition.
Policies Examples of Green Skills Development
Green Growth is a new paradigm for the environment and economic growth in a broad sense. It is expected to bring changes in social and economic structures and conversion of manpower utilization, which in the long term will create and expand green occupations, thereby contributing to economic development. Green industryis defined as a key industry which enables sustainable economic growth as well as reducing greenhouse gases and environmental pollution in response to climate changes. So, the green energy industry is the
one related to renewable energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases or technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (clean technologies, efficient technologies).
New renewable energy is defined as “energy obtained by converting existing fossil fuels or renewable energy including solar, water, geothermal heat, rainfall, bio-organisms” based on the Article 2 regulation of “Act for Promoting Development, Usage, Distribution” in Korea, and it is classified into 11 fields. Despite the expensive initial investment costs of new renewable energy, advanced countries have been promoting drastic policies for R&D and expansion of new renewable energy due to the fact that it is the major measure to solve the depletion of fossil fuel energy and environmental problems. New renewable energy industry is a future industry which can be the next generation growth engine in Korea along with IT (information technology), BT (bio technology), and NT (nano technology) industries, only if the price competitiveness can be secured in comparison to the existing energy sources. However, the expansion of new renewable energy in Korea has been relatively low compared to other advanced countries, especially recognizing that the expansion levels of highly intensive energy such photovoltaic energy, wind energy, and fuel cells are very low.
The government is promoting the “Development Strategies for New Renewable Energy Industries” with the purpose to make a leap into the top five new renewable energy superpower nations, investing a total of 40 trillion won (about 40 million USD) by 2015. To this end, the government is aiming to achieve 36.2 billion won of exports and 110 thousand employed by 2015 by developing photovoltaic energy as the second semiconductor, wind energy as the second shipbuilding industry, and by promoting joint growth of large conglomerates and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Ministry of Strategy and Finance etc. 2010). With green growth industries, the government emphasized the green skills development to support the industry. Some policy cases of new renewable energy skills are discussed including skills development in specialized high school, high level skills in a graduate school, and a skills training program by the New Renewable Energy Association as best practices in this report.
Skills Development Policies for Female Workers
Two best practices of female skills development policies of Korea are introduced in this paper. Especially in Asian countries where the patriarchal system has been established and is still dominant, the types of occupations women could access to were restricted to only a few feminine jobs. Recently these countries became more aware of the importance of the female workforce and the utilization of it in economic development.
The Korean government established strategies for the skills development of women with a widespread awareness in order to strengthen Korea's competitiveness in science and technology sectors, such as the newly emerging IT, BT and NT sectors, an excellent female science and engineering workforce must be supplied. In order to resolve these problems, it was necessary to encourage female students to work in science and engineering sectors which used to be traditionally male-dominant areas. Moreover a support system specialized for female human resources should be formed for smooth transition from school to work, and work to school, thus insuring that women can work continuously instead of giving up their careers in science and engineering sectors. Most importantly, the WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) Project is represented as a policy that covers all age groups of female human resources.
This study also deals with green jobs which are readily accessible for married female workers who intend to reenter the labor market after a retreat from it due to marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing. It shows the process of how to select promising green jobs for female workers, and it also shows how the government can facilitate the skills development process for these workers and the governance structure of key institutions involved in the process. It is expected that this case study can help policy makers in the DMCs throughout the process of identifying green jobs that are promising for female workers, developing green job skills, and establishing the governance structure that can best coordinate the stakeholders and also produce the best outcomes.
In the case of Asian countries, women do not enjoy high social status, nor do they get educational or vocational training opportunities enough for skills development. More prominently, there was not a big possibility for educated women to get professional jobs in science and technology sectors. In terms of employment sectors, the employment rate for low status occupations, regarded as a traditional women’s area, is relatively high, whereas
non-traditional employment in science and engineering sectors etc. is limited. The quality of employment is not high either.
Meanwhile, it seems that women’s determination to attain jobs is rising in Asia, but just like in Korea, social support systems for child raising is not well structured, and since mothers take more responsibility in child raising in families, career disconnection due to child raising is very frequent. Korea has experienced the same problem as well and has been trying to resolve the imbalance of women’s reentering job market.
3. Implications and Policy Recommendations for DMCs
As a result of the study on the best practices of Korea’s skills development in industry- academia partnership, green skills, and female skills the following recommendations are suggested. First of all the SWOT (strong points, weak points, opportunities, and threats) analysis of the environment of economic development and skills development provide suitable policies. Through the SWOT analysis, the government should select a few strategic key industries of a nation which has comparative advantages for development to other countries. Then the government development plan should be concentrated on key industries, thereby specializing the key industries and developing the skills to generate major earnings.
Human resource is one of the most important engines of economic growth. Nations maximize their outputs and develop with abundant supply of human resources. The supply of human capital can only be ensured by paying a country’s skills development due attention.
Industry-Academia Partnership
Industry-academia partnership is an important measure to heighten the effect of human resources connecting educational institutes and industrial on-site for skills development and research and development to response to the demand of technology and knowledge from the industries. In Korea and other Asian countries, industry-academia partnership is still being implemented as a cooperative relationship between individual educational institutions and individual corporations.
In the case of Korea as well, there has been much investments intended to encourage industry-academia partnership based on individual cooperation, but it still has its limitations. Therefore, the important issue is the reform which could institutionally guarantee collective voice of users. In this regard, the cases of newly established Sector Skills Council (SSC) per industrial sector of India are noteworthy. Yet, in the case of India, SSCs will be operated with the main focus on informal sectors, in which case there will be the problem of the entire representativeness. Promotion of collective industry-academia partnership is worthwhile to examine the case of India. From the case of Korea’s industry-academia partnership policies, the following recommendations are suggested.
First, to activate industry-academia cooperation, incentives for industry-academia partnerships must be institutionalized within educational institutions and industries. For example, if the performance of academic research is the dominant factor to decide recruitment and promotion of faculty members, it would be difficult to revitalize practical- oriented teaching and research activities through industry-academic cooperation. In order to correct this, the Korean government is calling for the establishment of institutional bases for the revitalization of industry-academia partnerships in the whole college or university itself instead of in a specific department or college in a university. In addition to enhance the willingness of the industries the government manages tax exemption for incentive system for the industries to participate in partnership. Such cases could be considered with importance in other Asian countries as well.
In India development of key industries, automobiles, textiles, and construction, is quite rapid contributing to national economy. At the same time to maintain its strength, the skills and knowledge should be enriched responding the forecasted demand of industries. So the partnership with industries and learning institutes should be developed to cover not only human resources development but also research and development cooperatively to keep advancing. IT industries should be linked to work with higher education institutes to produce high level skills. Importantly the government should implement policies to attract industries and academia together with incentives of funding, tax exemption etc.
Second, with respect to financial support in schools, the investments must be closely connected with regional industrial development. Development plans and policy of the local authorities should be reflected. Especially to this end, it is imperative that Ministries
administering policies of economy and industries and those administering education should collaborate closely, exchanging and cooperating from the budget planning of this financial investment to its execution. Especially meister high school system is managed based on local regional industries and LINC projects as well. The regional peculiarities and regional industries have to be considered when deciding the specialization area of school.
The National University of Indonesia and Korea Polytechnic University are collaborating to transfer the Technology Innovation Park (TIPs) model which is being currently practiced in. To transplant industry academia partnership practices that are proven to be successful in Korean educational institutions seems to an area where Korea can provide effective consulting for the DM countries. Sri Lanka has small-sized industries which support the national economy. There is a great demand for entrepreneurship education and incubators.
Third, for financial investments, there is a need to implement a proper amount to produce intended result. If a small scale investment is dispersed, it will become difficult to expect the economies of scale in investment, resulting in financial inefficiency. Therefore, it is necessary to make prudent and strict selections for the subjects of support, and provide sufficient financial support at the same time. In Korea, there were cases of providing small scale support to various sectors in the past, but they were not very effective, resulting in a tendency to integrate the existing small scale supports into large scale support, and to strictly select the subjects for support.
Fourth, it is necessary to consider the contexts critically if it is favorable for the successful transfer of Korean models of the industry-academia partnership to the DMCs.
For example, the meister high schools can be considered as successful thanks to the sufficient job opportunities for their graduates from industries in promising fields or large companies which are in need of a labor force. Therefore, for the successful transfer of these schools to the DMCs, it is essential to examine whether there are sufficient prospective job opportunities for their graduates in the key industries, strategic industries, and favorable industries. In other words, for successful partnership, the industry should be prosperous.
The University of Indonesia is interested in the Technical Innovation Park of Korea Polytechnic University as a benchmarking model to activate cooperation with industries improving skills of students and research and development technologies. It is reasonable to concentrate on collaboration with small and medium sized companies in DMCs. As already mentioned in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam a lot of enterprises are developing but it is still
too early to work with. Instead small and medium sized enterprises whose situation is favorable to cooperate together should participate in cooperation activities as the first step and develop gradually.
Fifth, the government leadership takes an important role to construct infrastructure of industry-academia partnerships at the stage of initial development. As analyzed in Korea’s case, the government-led policy for industry-academia partnership improved efficiency of skills development. Also the funding scale can be decided by the government not to be dispersed into a small scale investment by various ministries. The meister high school system is successful when a large scale of budget is invested. So if the DMCs government cannot afford enough money, then it is desirable to make use of the ODA funding supported from abroad.
Sixth, the ultimate beneficiaries of skills development through industry-academia partnership should be the demanders of education and training, industries, students, and parents, not the suppliers which are schools, government, training centers and educational institutes. Then the activities and practices in partnership should benefit students in improving their skills, knowledge, employability, employment rate, and benefit industries producing labor force fitting the needs of industries, resolving difficult skills, and developing technology. In addition vocational education and training programs and institutes in Korea are evaluated regularly to control the quality of education. The TVET in DMCs should establish an evaluation system. Vietnamese government has much concern about quality assurance system.
Seventh, the policy cases of industry-academia partnership imply the best practices of smooth transition of school-to-work and work-to-school, which connect skills development and labor market to achieve a lifelong learning society in the long run.
Green Skills Development
As green growth pursues early realization of output increase and employment increase in a long term perspective, proactive employment policies for green growth are expected to overcome differentiation of labor markets, polarization and discrimination etc., and to become meaningful policies pursuing fair society. Other Asian countries are also making efforts to achieve economic development through environment-friendly and low carbon structure as well. For example, in Indonesia, regarding green industries, 2012-2014 mid-to- long term development plans for national green growth strategies have been established and promoted by the “National Climate Change Committee”.
Numerous Asian countries are adopting green growth as national strategies and devising efforts to achieve green growth for each sector. The reason for this phenomenon is the high expectation of green growth regarding changes in social and economic structures and conversion of manpower utilization, which in long term will create and expand green occupations. This progress will finally contribute to economic development. Currently we could find the DMCs promoting various policies for green growth. Especially, we recognized that they had much interest in and were investing in regular education and job training sectors for green manpower development policies. The policy recommendations for the efficient promotion of policies related to green skills are suggested based on the research result, interviews with experts, and field studies.
First, development of green manpower is necessary to promote green industries as new growth engines. The core skills of both high level and low level should be developed in order to provide the labor forces for promoting and making green industries as the new growth engines. For this purpose designation and establishment of education institutes and training centers for green job skills are required. Furthermore, the training for the unemployed in a green friendly way need to be reformed so that the labor force lay off from non-green industries can quickly move to green jobs. This may increase the possibility of converting the training for the unemployed, which was centered on traditional manufacturing industries, into green related industry sectors.
While there is a high awareness for green growth in Vietnam, skill development in green areas is rather at the beginning stage. It is suggested that Vietnam take a step to develop green skills at high school level.
The government of India put considerable effort to advance the green industries in agriculture, hydroelectric power, and solar energy. Also the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has been established in charge of green vocational education and training. To proceed to the green initiative successfully the policies for green manpower development should be elaborated upon. Not only the levels and specific industrial fields should be analyzed but also the programs developed for the education and training institutes.
Second, the government must support the green skills training financially to convert existing industries into green industries. In order to convert existing industries into green industries smoothly, a training system for green skills according to the conversion of automobile, steel, and shipbuilding industries into green automobile, green steel, green shipbuilding industries has to be established and supported. In case of supporting the green industries, the financial support should be provided with education and training.
Indonesian government has made an effort to develop green industries and green skills.
Indonesia organized a ‘National Climate Change Committee’ leading the following four green growth strategies: growth-oriented, job-creation-centered, poverty-eradication, and environment-friendly. These strategies include job creation. The key of successful implementation is the budget which supports the plans. So the ‘Green Growth Fun’ set up for green growth should be working for skills development through development of green curriculum in the schools, colleges, and training institutes collaborating with green industries.
Third, supplying green labor forces which live up to the needs in consideration of regional characteristics should be increased. Regional based public training institutions shall be designated and labor force needs to be developed in order to develop entry-mid- advanced level workers which aims to live up to the green demand of regions and industries such as the creation of green clusters in consideration of regional characteristics.
Fourth, a national technology qualification system that leads green industries needs to be established. In order to induct national technology certification systems that could lead green industries, green certification subjects should be newly established and green industry technology labor force developed, the existing national technology licenses into green- friendly ones reformed, quality management of green qualifications strengthened, and opportunities for acquiring green licenses expanded. Currently Vietnam is working to establish national qualification system modelling a few advanced systems, which should be focusing on green industries.
Fifth, strategies such expanding investments into green technologies are used to attract excellent talents. By continuously increasing the proportion of investment into researches on basic and original technologies in green industries, green technologies should be developed, and investment into integration of IT and NT etc. promoted into green technologies which could lead future green growth. More attention should be paid to the need to secure green growth engine capacity developing core green technology talents, and support to expand specialized graduate schools for green industries. In addition we not only have to strengthen excellent green industries among science, engineering, converging technologies, and basic research areas should be discovered and funded continuously, but also have to promote education and research capabilities.
Sixth, demand-oriented green skilled labor force should be attracted and developed.
Programs for developing green skills and technologies should be designed and provided with support for related major courses in higher education institutions. The needs analysis and outlook of skills and technologies by levels and by specific areas need to be conducted in the long term perspective. In addition, the quantity and quality of customized talents are to be developed and increased reflecting the demand of green industries.
Energy industry constitutes the main issue of the green industry sector in Sri Lanka. The Ministry of Power and Energy should make an effort to provide green labor force to the green energy sector. When developing curriculum at the secondary education level as well as in the training centers fundamental green energy skills in the fields of electricity, electronics and mechanism have to be emphasized.
Seventh, strengthening the coordination system of the industry, academia, and research institutes for green growth constitute an important aspect. An organic cooperation system should be feasible with major economic groups to form a biz network for co-development of green technologies. To this end, information services on difficult technologies, needs of new technologies, and newly developed technologies are provided. In addition, strengthening the expertise of technology-transfer organizations of universities is essential.
Eighth, currently, a lot of Asian countries are promoting green growth strategies in specific ways, but there is insufficiency in developing curriculum for vocational education and training sectors and human resources development. Therefore, it is necessary to develop and utilize curriculum suitable to vocational education and training and human resources development in green growth.
Female Skills Development
In Asian countries, it is important to promote specialized programs for women and grant incentives for job capacity development so that more women can participate in skills development, and especially, it is necessary to develop mentoring and experience programs of related corporations which enable women to develop their careers in non-traditional occupations with high occupation status and high proportion of experts. Furthermore, it is necessary to strengthen social support such as child care support for women to prevent disconnection of career due to child birth or child-raising.
To speed up the economic development in the four DMCs, generally boosting up the participation in the labor market is important, and in particular boosting up the female labor force participation is important. Two policy initiatives to boost up female participation in the labor market are discussed in this report. First, at the school level, the WISE (Women in Science and Education) initiative of Korea, supporting female exposures to science and technology fields during the school period, is introduced. Second, a government research project was conducted to help women who left labor market. This research project illustrates how to support women who are reentering labor markets by selecting the ‘right’
green jobs that are both promising and approachable for these women and by introducing a network model that supports the process from the stage of vocational training to the stage of job placement.
In order to increase the education proportion of science and technology sectors for which women had not received sufficient education, female students were assisted to make various decision about their career through science and technology experience programs and mentoring programs. Junior high school and high school students, expecting to enter colleges, received support to become interested in science and technology sectors through experiences related to universities, research institutes and related corporations before deciding their majors. Systems were also established in order to help college students and graduate students in science and technology sectors to continue working in these sectors.
Also this research shows the connection steps of the policy establishment of employment support systems suitable to green occupations and development of job duty suitable to analyses of training demands as follows; “analyses on demands for jobs → development of jobs through analyzing opinions of experts → job duty development → employment support system”.
Based on these initiatives targeting women in Korea, the following recommendations are proposed for the four DMCs in Asia. First, the DMCs need to adopt programs similar to WISE in order to increase participation of young female students in the area of science and technology. In these countries, there is shortage of supply in the field of science and technology. Therefore, promoting female participation in science and technology, while female students are particularly under-represented in these fields in developing countries, can contribute to increase the manpower in this field. Attracting female students to choose careers in science and technology is important at the school level. Finally, government initiatives such as WISE in Korea and GIST in United Kingdom are required.
Second, it is important to increase the exposure of female students by letting them participate in field trips to museums and research labs to familiarize them with this field and by providing them with a chance to participate in the science camp and mentoring programs.
Third, by giving female college students an opportunity to participate in the internship programs in the field of science and engineering industries and research labs, they can more readily choose a career in the field of science and technology. Close cooperation between colleges (school and industries) constitutes the prerequisite conditions to facilitate internship programs.
Fourth, to support the employment of women returning to the labor market after they left work due to marriage, childbearing and child-rearing, government support initiatives need to be established to systematically support the process of vocational training and reemployment.
Fifth, it is essential to select jobs and fields that are most accessible for women with career disruption. New jobs such as green jobs can be more approachable for these women, since the perceived gender role for women is to care more for the environment. Therefore, it is more likely that female workers can match with these jobs.
Sixth, to identify jobs for which these women can be easily trained is important as well.
To serve this goal, analyzing the job market for these women and identifying the jobs that are most approachable for them by a needs analysis is equally important.
Seventh, it is necessary not only to provide job training, but it is also crucial to help these people find jobs. To do so, the government is responsible in establishing training policies which connect jobs at various levels to match various demands and skills of women.
Eighth, the government needs to monitor the process from vocational training to job placement by establishing a support network to facilitate the process.
There is growing interest in green growth in developing countries, and the consideration of environment in the process of economic development can be regarded as the essential element of sustainable development. Especially, the development and utilization of the women’s workforce plays an important role in economic development. Developing appropriate occupations for those and establishing suitable employment support systems are expected to make an important contribution to the green growth in developing countries. In addition, if a proper training system and employment support networks for each country can be established based on the presented employment support model, it is expected to contributeto improving the development of human resources.
