Foreword

The integration of work and learning is not new, as many of the writers in this book will attest and illustrate. Industries and businesses function in a technically and socially changing knowledge environment, simultaneously generating and requiring new knowledge and skills. Universities are an integral element of societies' knowledge generation and transfer systems. How they meet this mission is under challenge and pressure to change due to significant reforms in government agendas, social expectations and technological innovation. These forces have produced an invigorated and more formal focus in universities on the relationship between learning and work and among industries, professional regulatory bodies, and universities. Universities have always had both formal and informal programmes in which students engaged in work outside of the classroom in order to learn. What is new is the public inclusion of work integration into institutional missions, targets, and strategic plans making it visible and contestable in higher education and subject to quality assurance and systematic research.