Vocational education for tomorrow must be an educational delivery system rather than a subject-matter content area. It must blend and interrelate the various areas to provide core competencies, employment skills, and employability skills in a truly integrated and comprehensive educational program. Academic and vocational education must not be placed in conflict with one another; rather, the secondary vocational curriculum should be redesigned in such a way as to allow for the extrapolation of academic competencies from the vocational curriculum. What is needed is an integrated curriculum approach focusing on the development of academic skills in an applied setting. Th regional area vocational school is particularly suited to such a curriculum. Whether offered at a comprehensive high school or area vocational school, vocational education must place more emphasis on codeveloping programs with local businesses and preparing students for the inevitable retraining that they will need throughout their working lives as the relentless pace of high technology reshapes the labor market every 5 to 10 years. Because vocational education is not a training program but rather an educational program preparing students to set the direction of their own lives and careers, it must integrate the job skills currently sought by employers with sound training in the basic skills, including technological literacy and career development skills. (MN)