The BEEHiVES project (Boosting European Exchange on Higher VET and Employer Involvement in Education Structures) addressed cooperation in the strategic partnership triangle defined as collaboration between HVET/PHE, employers and students. It examined how the strategic triangle contributed towards the development of skills relevant to labour market needs and equip students with the knowledge and skills relevant for their long-term employability, entrepreneurship and personal development. Our main question was: How can a strategic partnership and cooperation between providers of higher vocational education and training and professional higher education (HVET/PHE), employers and students be strengthened? The project brought together representatives of the strategic triangle to exchange innovative practices and deliver recommendations for improving employer involvement in HVET/PHE. In the first year of the project the partners identified how HVET/PHE is organized in six European countries (Basque Country/Spain, Czech Republic, Denmark, Flanders/Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom). During the second year, the project surveyed stakeholders throughout Europe, through a mixture of methods to gain a more in depth understanding of their inter-collaborations. Main ResultsThe fast-pacing change due to developments in technology is a concern for all stakeholder groups, and implies an area requiring closer, more consistent, long-term collaboration. Effective methods of collaboration have centred around joint participation of stakeholders in governance and consultation structures, joint knowledge transfer and extensive surveying of stakeholders to inform decision-making.Compared to graduates from more academic streams of education, employers find graduates from HVET/PHE to be more employable. Nevertheless, they universally indicate that there is still significant room for improvement, arguing that graduates do not have the necessary soft skills and attitudes to enter the labour market without additional training. All stakeholders admit a significant difference in cultures between the three groups as the main barrier to strengthened collaboration. These cultural differences can be exacerbated by practices such as excessive bureaucracy and lack of flexibility at educational institutions; excessive focus on short term economic returns (rather than long-term benefits from training) on the side of businesses, especially during economic fluctuations and recessions; and the weakness of processes to enable student participation in most decision-making structures.Our research indicates that setting collaboration as a priority and then relying on organic growth, does not lead to a truly integrated strategic triangle. Collaboration is enabled at:-micro-level by strategies for supporting individualised collaboration pathways allow for individual students, SMEs and businesses to collaborate on specific projects-meso-level by structured collaboration boards within the structures of HVET/PHE organisations, business chambers or student associations allow for top-down coordination of the relationship providing that these boards have regular contact, to work on specific objectives measured against pre-set targets-macro-level by empowering regional forums bringing together all three stakeholders to set the goals of collaboration since these allow for the overall purpose of the strategic triangle to be set within a wider societal context.Impact and ConclusionsThe strategic triangle is at the heart of the BEEHiVES project, and more widely, the heart of the mission of HVET/PHE Institutions. Paying true attention to the importance of the triangle implies deeply integrating and mainstreaming these indicators into quality systems operated by all parties. The sum of our research indicates that collaboration in HVET/PHE has primarily been focused around collaboration between educational institutions and businesses for the benefit of students and the wider economy. Students themselves have not been seen as an equal participating partner in the strategic triangle in Europe, even though they possess great potential, especially as later alumni and possible employers. Future work should focus on ways to further support and strengthen their contributions.Furthermore, career guidance at HVET/PHE institutions and companies of students and employees has consistently been marked as critical to supporting personalised career development pathways. Thus, quality factors for such guidance processes promise to be a potential fruitful area for exploration.Finally, joint research projects seem to hold significant potential, particularly in enhancing long-term tripartite collaboration – exploring case studies of such projects promise to yield valuable information on further enhancing the strategic triangle.