Vocational training schemes produce ripe peppers that ripen no further.
George ILIEV
It is tempting to compare corporate employees with pumpkins but I will limit the analogy to bananas and peppers. The two crops are hugely different in one respect: bananas are picked green and will then naturally ripen over time, while peppers cannot ripen once detached from the plant. Furthermore, the ripening of harvested green bananas (or green tomatoes by the same token) can be accelerated if they are exposed to ethylene gas, which is a plant hormone. Placing an apple next to a bunch of green bananas can do the trick, as apples emit ethylene. Peppers, grapes and strawberries, on the other hand, lack the ethylene receptors and genes that trigger this ripening process and can only ripen on the stalk.
Back to the analogy with employees: broad university education churns out green bananas. University graduates do not need to be perfectly ripe for the labour market - different companies will use various doses of human ethylene (i.e. training, mentoring, etc.) to make them fit for purpose. The important thing is university graduates are malleable.
On the other hand, vocational training systems (widespread in Germany and Austria) deliver perfectly ripe employees to the labour market. However, over time these employees are not malleable. According to The Economist (June 1, 2013) "early [vocational] training can turn into a disadvantage by the age of 50. It appears that skills learnt in vocational training become obsolete at a faster rate." Once detached from the vocational training scheme, these employees cannot "ripen" much more.
The old George Bernard Shaw once said: “At my age, I don't even buy green bananas.” However, if a company or an economy can wait for the green bananas to ripen, that might be the optimal long-term choice, despite the swinging of the pendulum towards vocational training these days.
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