The wicked problem of making VET attractive – dilemmas in Danish VET policy

Vocational education and training (VET) has become political centre of attention, seen as a solution to many contemporary societal problems. The EU, for example, regards VET as playing a vital role in digitalisation and the transition to a green economy, pointing to the need to attract more students to VET rather than general upper secondary education. Both transnational organisations and national governments highlight as a central problem that VET is generally not held in high esteem. Parity of esteem is an issue that has been discussed by both policymakers and researchers for many years, but the problem remains. This article focuses on Denmark as a single case study with the aim of understanding the complexity of efforts to enhance the esteem of VET. I trace how the problem has been represented in VET reforms over the past 25 years and discuss the findings, drawing on the concept of ‘wicked problems’. The key argument is that parity of esteem is a wicked problem, and it cannot be ‘definitively described’ as it is embedded in conflicting interests and divergent representations of problems in VET – and beyond as VET is closely tied to other societal institutions such as the labour market, with varying wage structures and working conditions for different occupations and trades. As such, the problem of esteem comprises many interdependent factors for which there is no simple policy solution.