ABSTRACT
From the industrial revolution up to now, vocational education and training (VET) has contributed greatly to the countries’ economic development by providing the required human resources to the labor market. VET systems are structured in various countries with either an education approach or an employment approach. In countries that VET is structured with an educational approach, the relations of education with the labor market are weak, but the relations between VET and with higher education are strong. On the other hand, in countries where vocational education is structured with an employment approach, quite strong relations between VET and the labor market are established, while the relations between the VET and higher education are weak. In this second group of countries, all VET processes are conducted together with the legal sector representatives, and education and job positions are clearly standardized and matched. Therefore, youth unemployment is comparatively lower in these countries depending on the easy transition from school-to-work. However, it is seen that both approaches are becoming inadequate to respond to the current transformations in the labor market and economies. In this study, the problems that faced by VET are evaluated, and the common characteristics of the solutions produced by the countries are tried to be determined. When transformations in VET systems on the global scale are reviewed, it is shown that the new VET must combine the strong characteristics of both education and employment approaches, and produce strong answers to external threats. In this context, it is shown that the cumulative problems related to VET can be solved substantially when countries establish VET systems with strong relations with both the labor market and higher education. Lastly, the future of the new transformation in VET is discussed within the scope of theories that evaluate the integration between VET and the labor market with diverse perspectives, and it is shown that the new transformation will provide quite positive outputs in different aspects for graduates and job market.