For a variety of reasons that are closely connected to the rise of the knowledge economy, collective skill formation systems increasingly struggle to deliver on the twin goals of meeting firms’ skill demands and offering access to stable and relatively well-paid jobs for large groups of the population. Moreover, in many countries, attempts at progressive reform have faltered because of employer—and often also union—resistance to the introduction of non-firm-based alternatives to firm-based training. By analysing the inclusive pathway towards vocational education and training reform pursued by the Netherlands since the 1980s, this chapter shows that such opposition is by no means inevitable. This chapter shows how institutional legacies explain why Dutch employer groups did not view the development of a non-firm-based pathway to skill formation as a threat to the operation of the apprenticeship system and also supported other measures to improve the integrative function of the Dutch vocational education and training system. © Oxford University Press 2022.
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