Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Caroline Scheepmaker. Many graduates are struggling to find work due to increasing competition and fewer openings for new recruits. Concurrently, companies say that they cannot find graduates with the ‘right’ skills. Have universities lost track of the market and are they producing graduates that are not in demand? Just what can be done to bridge this divide?
Higher education is being asked to deliver graduates with the skills to maximise their career potential in an ever changing and globalising work environment, to the advantage of the (corporate) world. But it cannot be a mere case of ‘producing’ what employers ask for. Most employers are unable to articulate what exactly that entails, and the global market is too diverse to know it all anyway. Read more...

Higher education institutions are increasingly being expected to deliver graduates that can immediately step into the workplace and contribute fresh ideas and knowledge that will help to drive countries towards economic prosperity. Graduates are expected to transform themselves from the relative comfort and routine of student life to the diverse challenges of the workplace; preferably, in the first week of the job (assuming they actually find one). Read more...

Current and future Erasmus students can be reassured: Member States and the European Parliament have averted a funding crisis which threatened the popular exchange scheme after a last-ditch agreement which has enabled the EU to plug a shortfall in the 2012 budget and remove uncertainty about funding for 2013.
Thanks to the agreement, the Commission will be able to provide around 280 000 Erasmus student grants in the 2013-2014 academic year. The agreement also avoids problems for other exchange schemes run under the Lifelong Learning Programme (Leonardo for apprentices, Comenius for schools, Grundtvig for adult education), which enable young people and teaching staff to broaden their skills and career prospects through study or training in a foreign country. The budget deal also lifts uncertainty surrounding the Marie Curie Actions which support the international mobility of researchers.
The outcome of the negotiations was welcomed by Androulla Vassiliou, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth. "I am very happy that the Member States and the parliamentarians reached an agreement which is a big boost for Erasmus students and other beneficiaries of our programmes. It is a positive signal that Europe is committed to investing in education and skills."
The agreement, formally approved today by the European Parliament after a green light from Member States last week, wipes out a €180 million shortfall in the 2012 budget for the Lifelong Learning Programme; the shortage affecting Erasmus amounted to around €90 million out of this total. The agreement means that the Commission can now transfer necessary funds to the national agencies which are responsible for running Erasmus in the Member States. The agencies will then release funds to beneficiaries of the programme, including the home universities and colleges which pay the monthly grants to students.
The Council and the European Parliament have also reached an agreement on the 2013 EU budget which means around €500 million for Erasmus and €1 015 million for the Lifelong Learning Programme as a whole.
Erasmus accounts for more than 40% of the Lifelong Learning programme budget. Nearly 90% of the Erasmus budget is invested in student and staff mobility.
Background
Across all EU programmes, the 2012 budget faced a €9 billion shortfall. Under today's agreement, the European Parliament and the Council have agreed to provide a €6 billion top-up now to pay the most pressing needs, with the rest (€2.9 bn) to be paid in 2013. For most beneficiaries such as Erasmus students, researchers and businesses, this means that everything that should have been paid in 2012 will be paid in 2012. The funding held over until next year will cover bills for structural funds' projects, in particular those subject to payment suspensions.
The European Parliament and the Council also agreed on a total budget of €132.8 billion for 2013. This is €5 billion below the Commission's proposal, which was based on estimates from the 27 Member States themselves. With the extra held over from 2012, the Commission fears that the EU will face another budget shortfall next autumn.
The bulk of the EU budget in 2013 will be spent on supporting economic development and competitiveness in Member States (35.5% is allocated to the cohesion policy) and support for farmers (33.1% goes to the Common Agricultural Policy). Funding for Erasmus amounts to around 0.4% of the total budget.

L'entreprise au coeur des programmes d'éducation et de formation
En 2012, l'agence 2e2f a positionné le thème de l'entreprise au cœur des programmes de mobilité en Europe.
L'efficacité des programmes d'éducation et de formation n'est plus à démontrer: véritables leviers pour l'acquisition et le renforcement des compétences de chacun, ils permettent aussi de tisser des liens avec le monde de l'entreprise.

Vous êtes chef d'entreprise, RH?
recrutez des collaborateurs multilingues, mobiles pour vos activités à l'international!
Erasmus
Les étudiants Erasmus sont tournés vers l'international. Ils effectuent des  mobilités d'étude ou de stages en Europe durant un semestre ou une année universitaire. Recrutez-les en repérant dans les CV ces mobilités Erasmus, accueillez-les en stage professionnel dans vos entreprises!
Erasmus Mundus
Les étudiants Erasmus Mundus (de niveau master ou doctorat) sont des diplômés incontournables, issus de formations académiques d'excellence.
Leonardo da Vinci
Le programme offre des bourses aux jeunes en formation professionnelle pour des stages dans des entreprises européennes: polyvalence, adaptabilité, ouverture aux autres sont autant de compétences pour l'emploi.
Quels avantages pour les entreprises?

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is consulting on proposals to develop a new system for alternative providers of higher education.
The consultation’s aims are:

• to provide an overview of the new system for alternative providers that wish their students to be able to access student support from the Student Loans Company
• to seek responses to specific proposals on student number controls
• to invite views, particularly from alternative providers, on how this will operate in practice.

This consultation forms part of a review of the course designation system for alternative providers.
It is envisaged that the new system will involve more robust and transparent requirements in the areas of quality assurance, financial sustainability, and management and governance. Read the Government’s consultation.

This page shows data and evidence about the current and future supply of graduates and postgraduates by broad subject area.
The data give a ten-year picture of the numbers studying at A-level, applying to higher education (HE), and studying in HE at undergraduate and postgraduate level.‌
Overview
These datasets inform our approach to strategically important and vulnerable subjects. We use them to monitor where a subject might be at risk, and they help us and our partner organisations decide when, where and how to intervene.
We do not rely only on these data. Evidence from universities and colleges, employers, the Government and learned societies and subject associations also inform our approach. The HEFCE SIVS advisory group includes representatives from all these stakeholders and will consider this data each year. Read more...

Conférence EIAH 2013 Environnements Informatiques pour l'Apprentissage Humain, 6e édition. 29, 30 & 31 Mai 2013 - Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse - IRIT.
La conférence est organisée sous l'égide de l'ATIEF (Association des technologies de l'information pour l'Education et la formation). Téléchargez l'affiche de la conférence.
Le champ scientifique des EIAH concerne les environnements informatiques dont la finalité explicite est de susciter et d'accompagner l'apprentissage humain. Ces travaux convoquent des spécialistes de disciplines aussi diverses que la psychologie, les sciences de l'éducation, la didactique, l'informatique, les sciences sociales, l'ergonomie. La conférence EIAH 2013 se donne pour ambition de réunir ces spécialistes et de dégager entre eux des voies de convergence susceptibles de faire progresser une réflexion intégrée sur l'avenir de la recherche dans le domaine, mais aussi de dégager des pistes et des modèles pour la conception et la mise à disposition d'outils et de méthodologies susceptibles de faire progresser l'apprentissage sous toutes ses formes.
La conférence EIAH est organisée tous les deux ans, elle rassemble régulièrement autour de 200 participants, principalement des chercheurs, enseignants chercheurs & doctorants mais est également ouverte à tous les publics (concepteurs, enseignants, formateurs, responsables de formation...) intéressés par les travaux de recherche en EIAH et leur mise en pratique en contexte d'apprentissage.

Colloque « L'université et le monde professionnel - quels enjeux pour le doctorat ? »
Approches sociohistoriques, socioculturelles et socioprofessionnelles, 24-25 Janvier 2013 - CNAM.
A l’initiative du groupe de travail appartenant au programme collaboratif 1 du Labex Hastec deux journées de colloque sont organisées dont l’enjeu est de questionner la thèse de doctorat. En effet, à l’heure où les établissements d’enseignement supérieur professionnels frappent à la porte des universités pour pouvoir offrir à leurs étudiants la possibilité de passer une thèse de doctorat propre au champ professionnel concerné (doctorat en exercice, doctorat professionnel, doctorat en VAE, doctorat en VAP, etc.), il devient urgent d’en dégager les enjeux et d’en comprendre les impacts éventuels.
Ces deux journées ont pour objectifs de clarifier ces demandes, d’en dégager les effets en rapport avec des perspectives historiques, culturelles et professionnelles sur un plan national et international. Quelle est la nature des résistances? Quelles sont les compétences épistémologiques minimum exigées d’une véritable thèse de doctorat quel que soit son domaine? Telles sont les questions abordées lors de ces deux journées.
Des historiens, des épistémologues évoqueront les lignes de force de la thèse de doctorat.
Des universitaires, responsables d’écoles doctorales évoqueront les évolutions récentes du doctorat et la place de la thèse.
Des universitaires étrangers feront part des expériences de leur pays.
Enfin, des témoins, d’une part, de mise en place d’une articulation thèse-monde professionnel, et d’autre part, de travaux de capitalisation et d’analyse de thèses déjà soutenues par les professionnels, permettront de comprendre s’il existe une spécificité ou non d’un doctorat fortement lié à un champ de pratiques professionnelles.

If we are to come out of this crisis in a sustainable way, we are going to need to use all the human talent available. As societies across the world face problems ranging from population ageing to massive youth unemployment to increasing pressure on the environment and scarce natural resources, we need all hands on deck to find solutions and meet new challenges.
We know that greater educational attainment has accounted for about half of the economic growth in OECD countries in the past 50 years – and that owes a lot to bringing more girls to higher levels of education. So when the Taliban shoot a girl on a school bus in Pakistan to deter girls from going to school, it is not just an unpardonable act of violence against one person or community; it is a blow against growth and development for a whole economy.
But once you have your education, you need to be able to use it to reap the full economic benefit, both personally and globally. In OECD countries, more women than men are now graduating from university, and yet women still earn 15% less than men and hold only 10% of boardroom seats in major listed companies -- even though more diverse boards can help improve corporate governance. Women also spend fewer hours in paid work than men, and many more hours in unpaid work – cooking, cleaning, caring for children and ageing parents – and are more likely to end their lives in poverty.