As an alternative to work-based learning in enterprises outside the school, educational institutions also engage students in productive work under their own auspices. In the United States, for example, school-based enterprises traditionally attached to vocational education in high schools have performed such tasks as building houses or operating retail businesses. Most of these were associated with vocational programs. For example, students in construction trades may build a house, those preparing for food service occupations may run a restaurant, classes in automotive trades often repairs cars, and a child care class may provide day care for clients outside the school.
Similar activities take place in two-year colleges.
These school-based enterprises are analogous to teaching hospitals run by medical schools or law review journals produced by law school students. The school enterprise provides practical experience that helps prepare students for subsequent work in a particular occupation or industry. These are not part of the regular education or apprenticeship system but serve unemployed young people who have completed compulsory schooling without obtaining a vocational qualification. When apprenticeship placements became scarce in the 1980s, Danish policymakers built on the precedent of the production high schools to create a new option within the regular apprenticeship system. Printing, retailing, and construction are examples of the activities carried out by school enterprises.