Formation Continue du Supérieur

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By EPRSauthor. EU faces a paradox: the youth employment rate stands at 23% while there are around 2 million unfilled vacancies across Europe, and a high number of employers cannot find the right mix of skills in the job market, especially with regard to e-skills.
Many employers hold the inability of the educational system to provide work-related skills responsible for this increasing ‘mismatch’. Higher Education Authorities around Europe have put employability at the centre of their national HE strategies. However students contend that higher education should be steered by the needs of society rather than that of the job market and ask whether employability should be part of the university mission. HE institutions and academics, asked to prove the relevance or utility of their teaching and research for societal and economic needs, have concerns about preserving academic freedom and autonomy. More...

By EPRSauthor. This keysource aims at giving an overview of how Directive 2005/36/EC on the recognition of professional qualifications has been implemented but also highlighting the important issue of extending the scope of the system to more professions.
There are three avenues for the mutual recognition of qualifications in the EU: automatic recognition , the general system and recognition of professional experience. More...

By EP Library. Difficulties in recognition of professional qualifications (RPQ) continue to be one obstacle to mobility of workers. In order to facilitate and accelerate the RPQ process the European Commission proposed to modernise the 2005 Directive and introduce the voluntary European Professional Card using the system for electronic exchange of administrative information.
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Anerkennung beruflicher Qualifikationen
Reconocimiento de las cualificaciones profesionales
Reconnaissance des qualifications professionnelles
Riconoscimento delle qualifiche professionali
Uznawanie kwalifikacji zawodowych
Recognition of professional qualifications
Recognition of qualifications in the EU
In total, across the EU Member States (MS) there are about 800 categories of regulated professions. Access to these is often based on differing national laws, which can make exercising a profession in another country difficult. A 2011 Eurobarometer survey identified non-recognition of qualifications as one of the key obstacles to working abroad. Citizens expect RPQ to be easy and automatic, yet only 70% of requests meet with a quick and successful outcome. The EU problem-solving network (SOLVIT) reports RPQ problems as the third most common complaint. The Agenda for New Skills and Jobs, one of the Europe 2020 strategy’s flagship initiatives, concluded that facilitating RPQ would contribute to a better match of skills and jobs on the EU labour market. The 2010 Citizenship Report identified inability to apply electronically for RPQ, delays in processes and resistance at national level as the main problems. Furthermore, the last three Annual Growth Surveys and the Single Market Act found obstacles to RPQ to be persistent. More...

By Verena Kern. With almost 6 million jobless young people in the EU, policymakers are under pressure to find solutions to combat high youth unemployment. Whilst Youth Guarantees have been widely discussed and are currently being developed in many Member States, mobility – another strand of the European Commission’s (EC) Youth Employment Package – has received much less attention. More...

By Verena Kern. In the aftermath of the crisis, youth unemployment rates have reached new heights across Europe. In January 2014, 23.4% of young Europeans were without a job. Following an EU wide initiative, ‘youth guarantees’ are being implemented in many EU countries. At the same time youth entrepreneurship is moving into focus, as entrepreneurship is known to be a driver for economic growth and job creation. While only 4% of 15-24 year-olds were self-employed in 2011, the interest in self-employment and entrepreneurship seems to be much higher according to a Flash Eurobarometer Survey from 2012. The survey found that around 44% of 15-24 year-old Europeans think that self-employment is feasible and would like to set up their own business. Lack of skills and financial resources are the most common barriers to youth entrepreneurship. In order to address these issues and encourage entrepreneurship a number of initiatives at both EU and National level have been introduced in recent years. More...

By EP Library. What is U-Multirank?
U-Multirank stands for “multi-dimensional ranking of higher education institutions”. U-Multirank is based on a proposal in the Commission Communication on modernisation of Europe’s higher education systems (COM (2011) 567 final)  [1] (accompanied by Staff Working Document (SEC (2011) 1063 final), p. 5-6) and is implemented by a consortium of research organisations – CHERPA Network (Consortium for Higher Education and Research Performance Assessment) under a two-year project funded by the European Commission. More...

By EP Library. The potential of ICT for modernisation of education and training has become a key priority for the European Union. In its  Communication on Opening Up Education (procedure 2013/2182(INI), press release 25.9.13), the European Commission proposes actions at EU and national levels to “support the development and availability of Open Educational Resources (OER)” in education and skills development. The EP CULT committee published a draft report on New technologies and open educational resources on 11.12.2013 (procedure file 2013/2182(INI)).
OERs are “digital learning resources offered online freely and openly to teachers, educators, students, and independent learners in order to be used, shared, combined, adapted, and expanded in teaching, learning and research.”, OECD, 2012. The term was first introduced at the 1st Global OER conference hosted by UNESCO in 2002. By providing open access to course content, the development of OER initiatives have paved the way for free online courses, such as OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). More...

By EP Library. As stated in the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 3 January 1976, Article 13c, higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education. According to the World Bank, universities are a key part of all tertiary systems. This Keysource addresses higher education in Asia – with a focus on China and Japan. It lists reports and analyses on key aspects like curricula development and admission requirements for teachers and for students. More...

By Peter. Globalisation and technological development have an important influence on higher education. A 2008 OECD study (Higher Education to 2030, Volume 1, Demography) shows that over the next twenty years the demand for Higher Education (HE) is expected to grow from the current 99 million students worldwide to 414 million by 2030, with China showing by far the highest increase in recent years followed by Brazil and India.
On the other hand HE, is a focal point of the Europe 2020 Strategy as the demand for knowledge and skills acquired internationally is rising. With HE’s impact on innovation and research, it provides the highly skilled human capital that knowledge-based economies need to generate growth and prosperity. A 2010 study requested by the European Commission (“Mapping Member States’ external Education & Training policies and tools” / see also the summary published as a policy brief in 2011) examined the external education policies, instruments and tools in the countries concerned. The study identified 625 instruments: 487 in EU/EEA countries and 138 in Australia, Canada, Japan and the USA. More...