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This international comparative analysis of higher level vocational education examines devel-opments across five countries: England, Germany, Australia, Canada, and the USA. The au-thors consider how current developments address two key policy concerns: an emphasis on high skills as a means of achieving economic competitiveness and raising productivity; and the promise of increasing access for students hitherto excluded from higher education. We address these questions in relation to specific country contexts, in order to highlight similarities and differences in developments within the European arena and in a wider global context. We locate our analyses in an understanding of the different political and socio-economic conditions within different countries, which render particular reforms and innovations both possible and realiza-ble in one context, but almost unthinkable in another. We argue for the need to recognize and embrace diversity in provision, while using comparison across countries as a means of chal-lenging taken-for-granted assumptions of how things are and what is possible within individual country contexts. Such comparative analysis is a prerequisite for answering questions of policy transfer and learning from others.