By Allan Päll. It is true that governments in many developed countries see the need to increase higher education attainment rates, as William Patrick Leonard points out. And he is certainly sadly correct to highlight that increasing student numbers is often seen as a purely fiscal measure. But his arguments about the need to define the potential of learners better, however true that might be in certain cases, do not convince me that changes are needed in our higher education system.
The system has had to adapt rapidly to globalisation and the increased role of market economics in the running of higher education institutions. Future students are being told that higher education yields the same economic benefits as it did several decades ago or that it is a highway to a secure life. And thus expectations are being driven up, leading students to accept high debt levels resulting from the normalisation of higher education.
The personal (economic) benefit is to a degree dependent on the state of a country's economy or the societal values being nurtured in its education system and beyond. But despite all the negative talk, it is clear that if rapid economic development is to continue, we need more highly educated people and that many developed countries are, for example, already falling behind in the numbers of engineers they need to develop. This means that we should prioritise the actual competencies that students gain from higher education, which will help them stay in employment and benefit society in the long term.
There is thus a broad argument for supporting investment in higher education because of the societal gains it offers. I would therefore argue that increasing the number of people aspiring to a qualification is not the core of the problem. Rather, it is the lack of an adequate response from policy-makers and universities to the issue of maintaining standards while engaging more learners. Furthermore, a crucial argument for widening participation is the empowering role that higher education plays. It would be wrong to advocate some form of exact way of measuring the potential of those who might be suited to be students as sometimes this only emerges when certain conditions are met. And that cannot happen if some people are excluded.
We should also keep in mind that in a number of countries, a stratification of higher education institutions has emerged in which the older, traditional institutions that are more prestigious are filled with students who were almost guaranteed a place in higher education due to their socio-economic or cultural standing in society. But these institutions don't always do as much in transforming and creating potential in individual learners as many other institutions that actively engage students who mainly come from different backgrounds. So the question quickly becomes one about what the mission of educators and higher education is and the added value they confer on society as a whole. And in this, we should bear in mind that much of the added value will be difficult to measure. But one could say that educating those who are the first in their family to go into higher education is an accomplishment in itself. Elite institutions may also benefit from the potential that widening participation measures tap into.
So how do we both widen participation and maintain the quality of higher education? It boils down to what we learn, why we learn it, and how we best do that - these are questions which are not at the forefront when only economic arguments for higher education are used by students, families, employers or politicians. Thus the situation described by Leonard should rather be seen as a perverse reaction that is triggered by a lack of incentives for people to stay in higher education. Unemployment and high dropout rates should not be seen as unintended consequences of a failure to appropriately meet an increased demand for higher education, because unemployment, especially long-term unemployment, is still much lower for people with a higher education qualification.
Indeed it is not only institutional support, as Catherine Montgomery writes, but the holistic system of learning that enables people to become engaged in higher education. We need to find out more about why people are not incentivised to benefit from higher education, and why students drop out. It's not necessarily about throwing more financial resources at higher education but about bringing people together. And fortunately, in a world where 'facebooking' has become a verb, this is much easier to achieve than ever before. Thus the reaction towards increasing numbers of learners should be a focus on their autonomy as individuals and learners. We should talk more about the teaching methodology we use, the flexibility of our curricula and the changes that need to be made to support widening participation. In one of our projects in the European Students' Union we rolled out a student-centred learning concept based on research in the area that highlights some key issues in relation to this.
One of the most important issues that emerged about the effectiveness of learning is that different individuals from different backgrounds learn and engage in higher education in different ways. However, often the environment in higher education institutions or the structure of the curriculum conform to the notion of students being essentially the same as they were 30 years ago, and are blind to diversity. This means that higher education is less effective than it could be. So, enrolling more students but failing to adapt to a more diverse student body simply shows that higher education institutions have not planned properly for widening participation and is not necessarily an argument for building a more selective system. The answer to the issues raised by Leonard lies in changing our teaching methodology rather than in trying to avoid change by locking universities' doors.
One interesting example that has driven change in Europe is the increase in student mobility. Many institutions and student organisations have had to adapt and build new support systems after realising that they could not accept international students without providing specific support or counselling to help them overcome the difficulties of cultural adjustment. And with many surveys and research confirming that international experience is more valued than ever, this will also help to break traditional understandings of learning in a higher education context. It will also require us to reconfigure our mindset to understand that failure is an opportunity to learn. But, as Montgomery cleverly points out, obstacles often come as a result of the gaps between disciplines and failure can be averted by the provision of the right learning environment. Resources in institutions should thus be weighted heavily towards making students more autonomous at the beginning of their studies and that would save money in the long term. In the end, it is a question of how we make the best use of learning for every individual.

pcassuto | 01 mai, 2011 17:38

The outcomes of the IAU pilot project on Access and Success in Higher Education for Students from Under-Represented Groups are now available online.  They include a comparative review of access and success programs in several pilot universities and the report of the workshop held at the University of Arizona, USA, in November 2010 in collaboration with the University, the World Bank and Lumina Foundation.
Equity in Tertiary Education: a Global Challenge
Jamil Salmi, Tertiary Education Coordinator at The World Bank made a presentation entitled Equity in Tertiary Education: a Global Challenge, prepared jointly with Roberta Malee Bassett, Tertiary Education specialist at The World Bank. He started his presentation with the example of Maria, a six‐year‐old girl living in rural Panama: “Maria has four brothers and sisters, and her mother is an illiterate widow who earns about $180 per month as a subsistence farmer. What are Maria’s chances of becoming a prominent lawyer or a university professor? Not very high, and certainly a lot lower than those of a six‐year‐old boy growing up in Panama City with two parents in his home, both with a secondary education and a good income, and only one sibling. All over the developing world, many people face difficult odds of achieving economic and social success, just like Maria… Equality of opportunity is about giving Maria and all other children in the world the same chance to be successful in life.”
What next? Suggestions for specific actions to undertake
For the IAU, designing a self‐assessment instrument and using 10 pilot universities to implement it and discuss the results in a workshop setting was a second step (following the drafting and adoption of the Policy Statement). So for the Association, it was essential to obtain feedback with regard to the validity of the self‐assessment instrument, how it could be improved, how widely it might be applied and, most importantly, what service(s) IAU could offer in the future (if financial support was found).
The self‐assessment tool needs to be improved in several aspects. Most notably, better formulation of questions concerning the context is required. In this regards, the statistical data provided by The World Bank is very useful (please see: http://data.worldbank.org/topic/education). More work and input is needed to focus and frame key questions that would collect information about official government policies and programs with impact on issues equity and access, overall educational system and admission procedures, demographic data broken down by age, SES, gender, race, ethnicity or language groups, and information about other factors such as general graduate employment rates and, if possible, data disaggregated by target group, etc.
Evaluating the Self-assessment Instrument
Using a standardized questionnaire and approach to learn more about a given area of activity, and/or to assist universities in assessing their own policies and practices in order to improve them, is also worth evaluating as a methodology for further work in this area (promoting and improving the provision of equitable access and success or other areas of higher education policy). So the second issue of importance for IAU in this project, was to learn the extent to which the tool developed to gather the information for this report, can serve effectively inside a single institution and across institutions in different parts of the world.

Par Paul Santelmann, Responsable de la Prospective à l’AFPA.
3,1 millions d’entreprises de 0 à 199 salariés et 4798 établissements et entreprises de 200 à 499 salariés[Source INSEE, REE (sirene) – 2010]! Il manquerait 10 000 PME pour avoir un tissu économique similaire à celui des nos voisins du Nord de l’Europe et surtout une structure de l’emploi mieux adaptée aux défis de la mondialisation et de l’innovation technologique et organisationnelle. Les effets de cette situation sur le système de formation professionnelle sont nombreux et entravent son optimisation. Ainsi le développement de l’alternance dans la formation professionnelle des jeunes pâtit de la structure en taille des entreprises et nécessite notamment une amélioration des partenariats entre les opérateurs de formation et les TPE dans une logique d’innovation.

Contrairement aux représentations dominantes, les entreprises de petite taille concentrent plus de compétences opérationnelles, de polyvalence et de pluri-compétences que les très grandes qui peinent à abandonner les logiques pyramidales, les cloisonnements et les spécialisations post-tayloriennes. Pour les jeunes en insertion l’intégration dans l’univers des petites entreprises est l’occasion d’acquérir de nombreux repères professionnels et d’amorcer une professionnalisation structurante. Cependant ce processus est en partie avorté faute de perspectives d’embauche des jeunes en question par des entreprises à taille très réduite : près de 2 millions d’entreprises n’ont pas de salariés, près de 1 million d’établissements ont moins de 10 salariés, 170 000 n’ont que 10 à 49 salariés ! Alors que les marges de manœuvre favorables à l’embauche augmentent avec l’effet taille.
Cette situation implique une amélioration des démarches d’accès à l’emploi post-alternance afin d’éviter la tendance au retour dans un autre dispositif de formation faute d’accès à un CDD ou un CDI. Cette difficulté qui doit être prise en compte par les organismes de formation qui interviennent dans les différents volets des alternances (apprentissage, contrats de professionnalisation), mais elle ne doit pas minorer l’apport formatif des entreprises dans la professionnalisation des jeunes.
La formation professionnelle continue est un vecteur d’employabilité et d’accès à l’emploi mais elle est aussi un processus et un creuset de développement et d’optimisation des savoirs du travail et de réconciliation des nouvelles générations avec l’entreprise.
La gestion des savoirs dans le monde du travail obéit à d’autres logiques qui intègrent notamment l’expérience, le partage, la mutualisation, l’échange, bref autant de ruptures avec l’ordre scolaire et universitaire des savoirs descendants. L’entreprise est un concentré de savoirs mais elle n’en est que rarement consciente. D’une part, en France, la séparation entre le monde académique et le monde économique est plus prégnant qu’ailleurs. D’autre part le dialogue social s’est construit d’avantage en termes de rapports de force qu’en synergie des intelligences individuelles et collectives.
Le développement de l’alternance est une occasion de remédier à cette situation est de mieux équilibrer les objectifs d’accès à l’emploi et d’engagement professionnel des jeunes. Ce qui caractérise fondamentalement la formation professionnelle post-scolaire, c’est sa contribution à la diffusion des savoirs qui se construisent et se renouvèlent au sein des entreprises. L’alternance est en cela un outil de l’intégration professionnelle et nécessite une coopération innovante entre organismes de formation et entreprises qui ne soit pas la reconduction de l’opposition entre théorie et pratique mais bien une autre façon d’enrichir les pratiques et la théorie.

Minn Paul Santelmann, Kap ta 'Tbassir fil AFPA impjegati. 3.1 miljun kumpanija 0-199-impjegati u 4,798 kumpaniji u istituzzjonijiet 200-499 Sors [INSEE, REE (Siren) - 2010]! Huwa mitlufa 10 000 SMEs għall-tessut ekonomiku simili għal dak tal-ġirien tagħna fit-tramuntana tal-Ewropa u speċjalment ta 'struttura ta' impjieg aħjar adattati għall-isfidi tal-globalizzazzjoni u innovazzjoni teknoloġika u organizzattiva. L-effetti ta 'dan fuq is-sistema ta' taħriġ vokazzjonali huma ħafna u jfixklu l-ottimizzazzjoni.B'hekk l-iżvilupp ta alternanti ta 'taħriġ ta' żgħażagħ li jbatu mill-istruttura tad-daqs ta 'intrapriżi u b'mod partikolari jeħtieġ titjib sħubija bejn fornituri ta' taħriġ u l-uffiċċji dar fi innovazzjoni. More...