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A stylized finding on returns to vocational education is that vocational compared to general education generates a differential life course pattern of employability: while vocational education guarantees smooth transitions into the labour market and thus generates initial advantages, these erode with increasing age, leading to late-life reversals in employment chances. We contribute to this research by assessing cohort variations in life-cycle patterns and distinguishing two explanations for late-life reversals in employment chances. The adaptability argument states that this phenomenon is due to the lower adaptability and occupational flexibility of those with vocational education. In contrast, the health argument states that vocational education leads to physically more demanding occupations, faster health deterioration, and, thus, lower employability in later life. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we employ non-parametric state probability analysis to assess cohort variations in employment patterns, and mediation analysis to assess how much of the late-life reversal of employment patterns is due to a faster health deterioration among the vocationally educated. Results show that the early life advantage of vocational education increases across cohorts. Furthermore, those with vocational education exhibit faster health deterioration, and a small part of the late-life employment disadvantage of this group works through lower levels of health after midlife.

This book contains papers, some of which more accessible than others, in terms of conceptual clarity, that shed light on the development of the concept of Lifelong learning from its initial UNESCO formulation and elaboration as Lifelong Education, more expansive in scope than that at present, to the more OECD and EU driven economistic discourse on lifelong learning, focusing on "employability" which does not necessaily mean "employment" and which places the onus on individuals, rather than the provision of structures, for one"s ongoing learning. This was cynically regarded as a means of "responsibilisation" to adopt the sociological term critiquing this focus on individual as opposed to social responsibility. In this regard, Rasmussen"s reference to Jürgen Habermas" "diagnosis that the EU needs to change its decision-making processes into the "cizenship mode""(p. 28) is very apt.The genealogy of the concept is explained in a few chapters, a case of tilling familiar ground, as many other writers had done this earlier (Murphy, 2007; Field, 2001, 2010; Tuijnman, A and Boström, 2002; Wain, 2004; Borg and Mayo, 2005). ; N/A

A journal article on the importance of girl-child education in the national development of Nigeria. ; The importance of girl-child education to the development of any nation cannot he overemphasised. There is a saying that "if we educate a boy, we educate one person, hut if we educate a girl, we educate a family and a nation". In many parts of the Africa, particularly in Nigeria, the girl-child face significant obstacles in accessing proper education, there is a serious gap between the boy-child education and that of girl-child due to inherent societal values placed on the boy-child over the girl-child. The girl-child has her destiny sealed by both tradition and culture on account of biological sex. There is also a seeming absence of policies that are specifically geared to attending to gender issues with obvious room for gender gap. It is on the basis of this that this paper examined issues in girl-child education in Nigeria and its implications on the development of the country. Peculiar issues such as access to education, school retention and drop out, equity as well as quality of education were closely examined vis-a-vis the implication on national development. The paper also proffered solutions to eradicating the problems facing girl-child education in Nigeria in order to achieve meaningful development. The paper concluded that education is the right of every girl-child, a key to transforming her life and making her a responsible member of the society. Therefore, the government should not only provide adequate policies to meet this yearning need, but also ensure that these policies are fully implemented.

Empires and nation-states are not opposed or distinct forms of polity but closely linked forms. Pre-modern empire existed without any contrasting form of polity we might call a nation-state. Rather, they contrasted with non-national state forms such as city-states, small kingdoms and mobile, nomadic polities. These in turn were in constant interaction with any neighbouring empire or empires, perhaps becoming the core of an empire themselves, perhaps taking over all or part of an existing empire, perhaps maintaining some autonomy by virtue of remoteness or lack of attractiveness, perhaps by balancing opposed empires against each other. Empires did not have a national core, and non-empires were not national. By contrast, modern empires have always had a clearly designated nation-state core and a physically separate set of non-national peripheries. This has been crucial to ensuring that when formal empire is ended, both the imperial core and the former colonies are defined as nation-states. But ex-imperial nation-states and ex-colonial nation-states are really two kinds of states. Much contemporary confusion about the prospect for a world order of nation-states revolves round the failure to make that basic distinction.