Fixing problematic apprentice systems: there is never a clean slate

Due to their sheer size, economic importance and common sense history, national apprenticeship systems are important to many interest groups in advanced market democracies and provide a site where never-ending contests over control are waged. In particular, the constant shifts in the balance of the ‘who benefits-who pays’ equation reflects contemporary views on the relative roles of the state, private enterprise and the individual citizen. By using a modified version of path dependency theory, two vocational training systems are compared and contrasted in order to demonstrate how the public policy responses to a remarkably similar set of problems have produced very different solutions. The results suggest that while neoliberal ideas might be highly mobile, there are historical and political realities that serve to limit their translation into realistic policy options.