[hydrox24]

In Australia, we intentionally collapsed most of our vocational schools into our public universities a couple of decades ago. I guess that was fairly unique because it was such a conscious decision. Universities in the modern world _are_ in fact vocational schools for many professions. Class sizes and student numbers alone often show this.

And while big companies can train their own workers, many choose to off-load that competency to the universities as well. In Germany, many of the largest export employers have a symbiotic relationship with local (to the factory) Universities. The companies help determine the course structure and syllabus, and in return the graduates are offered good living wage jobs straight out of university with continued training and certification.

Australia is a long way off of the German model, so all I know is what I've read in the Economist and a couple of other publications, but there are certainly murmers of moving to such a model in Australia as well.

"University" just doesn't mean what it used to mean.

[mattmanser]

As I say elsewhere, just look at other disciplines taught by universities. This is a totally untrue view of what universities are.

They are learning and research institutions. They've never just been research institutions. And the vast majority of fields don't really bother teaching any R&D to under-grads, they just teach them the subject and practical application of it in the real, job, world.

In the UK we used to have vocational schools too, that all got changed to universities. It didn't mean no vocational training went on in universities.

[jgtrosh]

In France it's not so clear cut, but there have been more and more “professional” studies set up in universities. Many studies are actually not clearly « pro » or « recherche » but in between, and give you insights into both worlds. My Master's degree is like that and I ended up doing an industrial PhD after being sure I wanted to work in a company. In that context the teachers do their best to give some training specific to software engineering but it has to be balanced.