Engaging in Lifelong Learning -SIRUS- Shaping Inclusive and Responsive University Strategies

Foreword
Lifelong learning has been on the European agenda for more than a decade, but the recent economic and financial crisis and demographic changes in Europe have made it a priority for European universities. It is in this context that this report addresses the specific challenge faced by European universities to prepare citizens for their role in society and the economy by providing educational opportunities for professional and personal development. Download Engaging in Lifelong Learning - SIRUS - Shaping Inclusive and Responsive University Strategies.
The European Universities’ Charter on Lifelong Learning, adopted in 2008, provided the starting point of a project entitled “Shaping Inclusive and Responsive University Strategies” (SIRUS), which examined the processes of designing, adopting and implementing new strategies for lifelong learning from the perspective of higher education institutions.
29 universities from 18 different European countries have shared their experiences of creating or updating an institutional strategy for lifelong learning. They provide concrete examples of how universities are addressing these issues and the success and obstacle factors that they have encountered along the way.
It is hoped that their experiences documented in the present report can inspire other European universities to address actively the challenges of widening access and participation and lifelong learning. The project results indicate that, while national legal and financial frameworks play an important role for universities in the development of institutional strategies, the single most important push factor has been the active engagement of the university leadership in creating inclusive and responsive university strategies.
On behalf of the project consortium, which included the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), the European Access Network (EAN), and the European University Continuing Education Network (EUCEN), EUA would like to thank all parties that have contributed to the project and this report. Jean-Marc Rapp, EUA President.
5.2 Conclusions
The project has shown that the European Universities’ Charter on Lifelong Learning has played an important role as inspiration for the institutional development of lifelong learning strategies. The results of the SIRUS project suggest that there is not one single road to becoming a lifelong learning or an engaged university but that there are number of supporting factors and drivers that can facilitate the strategic development of the lifelong learning agenda, whether that is considered to be an institutional, a national or a European agenda.
Nevertheless, the most difficult and persistent challenges identified by the participating institutions included:
1. embedding concepts of widening access and lifelong learning in institutional strategies
2. adapting study programmes to ensure that they are designed to widen and attract returning adult learners
3. providing appropriate guidance and counselling services
4. recognising learning, in particular prior learning
5. establishing sustainable external partnership.
This set of challenges remained unchanged during the life-span of the project and might be considered as core issues for implementing lifelong learning in European universities. In fact, these are also common challenges that universities face for their core mission of providing teaching and learning for all students. Many participants also highlighted the fact that their governments have been slow to respond to the government commitments of the Charter, especially when it comes to funding the development of lifelong learning activities in European universities (cf. 4.1). The lack of funding for higher education in general is an important brake to developing institutional strategies for lifelong learning.
This report weaves lifelong learning with the concept of the engaged university. Such a notion ties together the different strands of the project in describing an institution with a culture of inclusiveness and responsiveness that articulates its three missions through a mix of activities that fits its specific ecosystem. Such an institution is driven by a strategy that balances academic values and societal concerns and advances academic knowledge and individual and societal development. It balances the pressures for academic excellence, societal expectations, government policies and institutional survival in the increasingly competitive world of higher education.
The SIRUS project has made it possible to examine the processes of designing, adopting and implementing new strategies for lifelong learning from the perspective of higher education institutions. It has highlighted the fact that it is a time-consuming process to change the direction of a university even if the appropriate conditions are assembled. The widening participation and lifelong learning agenda is not only about changing and developing the provision of education and research; it is also about the time-consuming process of changing minds or institutional self-perceptions. Academic staff must be persuaded to develop new pedagogical approaches and to implement continuous development in partnership with external stakeholders in order to move LLL from the periphery to the centre of the institutional strategy, from the confinement of a continuing education centre to playing a central part at the core of the provision of teaching and learning to all students.
It is hoped that the SIRUS project will give European universities inspiration on how to move quickly through the different developmental stages of implementing new lifelong learning strategies.
See also: SIRUS - Shaping Inclusive and Responsive University Strategies.