Education in the Learning Economy: a European perspective

The knowledge-based and the learning economy perspectives have in common that they point to an inherent tendency toward a polarisation in labour markets between people with strong and people with weak educational foundation. On this background we discuss how a movement toward mode 2 learning may be combined with strategies that aim at reducing inequality. We argue that the reform strategy that is the most adequate will be different in European education systems with more or less elitist characteristics and with different emphasis on respectively tacit and codified knowledge.