Vocational education in the academic drift or arrogance of academia in front of planetary crisis

Abstract

The article questions the feasibility of the universalist discourse on academic drift in vocational education from the perspective of the Global North-South configuration. We will discuss examples from Finland, Bangladesh, and Kenya, aiming to understand the relationship between vocational and academic education within a planetary environ-mental framework. The conceptual frame is the planetary crisis understood as work-mediated disrupted metabolic relations between human and nonhuman nature; epistemic rift as an indicator of the crisis; and the responsibility of academia in addressing the crisis as both researcher and educator.We start with mainstream interpretations of vocational and academic education in the Global North and South, then discuss a study of conceptions and expectations of university curricula in promoting sustainable livelihoods through vocational and adult education. We continue by reflecting on another study that questioned the possibility of connecting environmental care with social progress in adult, vocational, and higher education. Reflections lead us to conclude that knowledge production and education in academia remain disconnected from vocational education and work-life realities and ignore asymmetric power relations between the Global North and South. In tackling disrupted social metabolism and epistemic rift, we suspect the arrogance and ignorance of academia are more problematic than the academic drift in vocational education.