EMPLOYMENT PROSPECTS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION GRADUATES IN FRG

The employment prospects for graduates of higher education are the subject of mounting concern in many countries. In the last issue of the Bulletin we referred to this problem in the United States. (No.1. Vol.II 1977 p.19)

Below we present the main elements of an analysis of this problem as experienced in the Federal Republic of Germany. The analysis was published in “Bildungspolitische Zwischenbilanz” (Intermedium Report on Educational Policy) issued by the Federal. Ministry of Education and Science.     

EMPLOYMENT PROSPECTS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION GRADUATES IN FRG

The employment prospects for graduates of higher education are the subject of mounting concern in many countries. In the last issue of the Bulletin we referred to this problem in the United States. (No.1. Vol.II 1977 p.19)

Below we present the main elements of an analysis of this problem as experienced in the Federal Republic of Germany. The analysis was published in “Bildungspo‐litische Zwischenbilanz” (Intermedium Report on Educational Policy) issued by the Federal Ministry of Education and Science.     

Collaboration,knowledge and innovation toward a welfare society: the case of the Board of Social Farming in Valdera (Tuscany), Italy

Purpose: Through an analysis of a social farming (SF) case study, this article investigates how collaboration and knowledge co-creation between different actors can support the process of rural transition in order to stimulate innovation in the welfare system using agricultural resources.

Methodology: We used the ‘Antecedent-Process-Outcome Framework’ developed by Wood and Gray [1991. “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139-162] and adapted by Thomson and Perry [2006. “Collaboration Processes: Inside the Black Box.” Public Administration Review 66 (s1): 20-32], to analyse the collaborative process within the Board of Social Farming (BSF) in Valdera, Italy. The BSF in Valdera is particularly important as it was the first transition arena developed in Italy for SF development.

Findings: The article highlights the difficulties and opportunities encountered by the BSF in the knowledge co-creation and collaboration, and identifies key elements to facilitate innovation in SF and more generally in transition processes.

Practical implications: The article aims to generalize crucial practical elements in the relationship between collaborative approaches and innovation in the field of innovative welfare society, which is increasingly key to rural transition.

Theoretical implications: Innovation in SF is complex due to the need to identify new knowledge, diverse kinds of organizations and innovative interactions among many private and public stakeholders. The article explores the concept of collaboration in SF in order to re-define the production of public and private goods within local and rural communities.

Originality: The article aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of collaboration in order to reinforce rural transition pathways.     

Quality assurance in engineering education on a national and European scale

Activity 2 of project E4, “Quality Assessment and Transparency for Enhanced Mobility and Trans-European Recognition”, included the working group on “Quality Assurance in Engineering on a National and European Scale”. Its report can be found in Part 2 of Volume D, final report of the E4 Thematic Network (Firenze University Press 2003).

The Report of this Working Group is formed by three parts.

Chapter 2 explores the horizon of evaluation, and briefly summarizes evaluation mandate, focus and procedures in the light of quality and quality assurance, accreditation, responsibility, with particular reference to higher education.

Chapter 3 explores the ideas from a number of European evaluation models for higher education, and shows that their contents can be read in the frame of four fundamental “aspects” or “dimensions” of quality:

• –?Requirements, objectives

• –?Teaching, learning, assessment

• –?Learning resources

• –?Monitoring, analysis, improvement

Chapter 4 underlines that a Programme should be evaluated on the basis of its ability to put into effect a policy focusing—clearly and distinctly—on the external and internal efficacy of the learning process: specify worthwhile learning goals and enable most students to achieve the established objectives. The set of “aspects” examined in Chapter 3 is expanded into a minimum set of “factors”, that the Programme should address in a stable manner before it is submitted to an external evaluation.

In developing this activity, a selection of a few representative models was examined, bringing out the essential structure that they have in common. The reference documents can be found in the References section of this article.

What follows is extracted from the conclusions of Chapter 4.     

Defining the Australian mechanical engineer

The attribute focus in engineering education now adopted by the engineering education accrediting bodies of the US, UK and Australia is based on meeting the assumed needs of professional practice. It is associated with an increasing expectation by employers of work-ready graduates rather than relying on subsequent work-based learning and experience to develop many of the essential professional practice attributes. Yet the scope of the mechanical engineering profession is broad and views of practitioners contributing to debate on attribute requirements are largely influenced by their own often unique professional formation.

In addition, the formative development of the profession in Australia has been significantly influenced by 19th and 20th century UK and US practices, although historically the industrial profile of Australia has been strikingly different. An analysis of current industry distribution of Australian, UK and US mechanical engineers presented in this paper shows continuing, although less marked, differences.

To develop a clearer perception of the profession in Australia, its educational formation, and operational environment, this paper provides a concise study of the formative development of the profession, and presents a breakdown of the industry sectors in which they are currently employed. The effects of momentous global changes in engineering employment and formation over recent decades are also discussed.

Recent changes in engineering employment have included major structural changes to organisations, accelerating technical and educational developments and mounting societal expectations making it imperative that attributes be attuned to the new engineering paradigm as increasing demands are placed on our graduates.

This paper provides an essential foundation for ongoing debate and analysis of attribute needs related to this broadly based engineering discipline. Although presented from an Australian perspective, many issues discussed are applicable worldwide.     

Maintaining the self: meanings of material objects after a residential transition later in life

Introduction: Moving house later in life can be a major transition and valued material objects may be important to this process. The present study aimed to develop an explanatory model for the meanings of material objects to older adults in the context of a residential transition.

Method: Using grounded theory methodology, 12 participants were interviewed about the meanings and roles of valued material objects following a residential transition. Older adult participants lived in either their own home or a care home.

Results: The model entails two core categories, “threats to identity” and “objects and identity continuity” along with four explanatory concepts, “moving and identity discontinuity”, “connections across time”, “attachments to others”, and “preserving self and ancestors in the memories of the next generation”.

Discussion: Objects were described to have important personal meanings which helped people maintain a sense of identity continuity following residential transition. They were associated with comfort, security and life review processes, which support identity continuity later in life.

Conclusion: Moving house later in life can threaten a person’s sense of self. However, material objects can help maintain a sense of identity continuity through reminiscence and life review processes. Implications for community and residential care moving house transitions are discussed.     

IAU SEMINAR ON THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION AND ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION

The right to education has been solemnly proclaimed by the United Nations and, in many countries, it is explicitly recognized in the constitutions or legislation.

The real problems are: the exercise of this right and the extent to which it can be seen to be a reality in different types of society; the international consequences of inequalities and differences in stages of development between countries in these matters.

Higher education is not a universal right and cannot be so in the foreseeable future, in many countries. An increasingly large proportion of the relevant age group already considers it “normal” to enter higher education and the time may well come when everyone will be expected to receive some post‐secondary education. Pressure may then be exerted to seek the transformation of this “normal” situation into a legal norm so that the right to education will then come to be interpreted as a right to higher education or post‐secondary education. Although this is not yet the case it may be wise to try to foresee the consequences of such an evolution both for the educational system and for society.

In this context the Vth Seminar of the International Association of Universities (IAU) which was held from 29 May to 2 June 1978 in Halle (GDR) concentrated its discussion on the following topics:

• the right to education for professional employment and the right to education for its own sake; the consequences for access to higher education;

• the specific role of the university in the exercise of the right to education;

• international aspects of access to higher education.

We present below an edited version of the Seminar's aide‐mémoire on its discussion.     

THE SWISS SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION

We have received numerous requests to present in “Higher Education in Europe”, in relatively short form, the main features of higher education systems in the different countries of the Unesco European Region.

As partial response to these requests, we present below a survey on the Swiss system of higher education, written for “Higher Education in Europe” by Dr. Esther C. Garke from the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Science, and CEPES Liaison Officer in Switzerland.

We also take this opportunity to invite our readers to provide us with papers or documents for similar presentations.     

CREATION OF A CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL CO‐OPERATION AND SERVICES AT THE OPEN UNIVERSITY

During the late 1960s the United Kingdom was one of many countries which faced a potential educational crisis arising from a growing demand for post‐secondary education linked with inadequate resources for its conventional provision.

“Distance learning” techniques, providing an alternative form of study based on multi‐media methods outside formal educational systems, have emerged in response to this new demand.

Within the sector of higher education the Open University of the United Kingdom is one of the most comprehensive distance learning systems.

Many requests have been made to the University for information on distance education and for advice and assistance in establishing similar ventures elsewhere. In response to these developments the University Senate has created recently a Centre for International Co‐operation and Services (CICS).

We give below information on the main functions of this Centre within the framework of the Open University activities.     

Education for the Teaching Profession: Upstart or Start‐up?

Robert Howsam prefaced his paper with the story of The Velveteen Rabbit, a very ordinary, cheap rabbit who was loved by his owner for only an hour on Christmas morning, and spurned by the other toys‐‐those which were expensive, mechanical, very modern, or exquisitely detailed‐‐until he felt very insignificant and commonplace. His only friend was the Skin Horse. The oldest inhabitant of the nursery, he was battered, bald and showed his seams, but he was also wise and experienced.

"What is REAL?”, asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the Nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having that buzz inside you and a stick‐out handle?"

“Real isn't how you are made”, said the Skin Horse. “It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

Rabbit also learned that becoming Real sometimes hurt, and that it takes a long time. “That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.”

Eventually the Boy and the Rabbit became inseparable. One night, when Rabbit was left in the garden, an annoyed Nanny, having had to collect him, chided the Boy for making such a fuss over an old toy.

“You musn't say that’, said the Boy. “He isn't a toy. He's Real.”

And Rabbit was happy.

Real rabbits, who found him one day in the garden, laughed at hint when he said he was Real, but, in time, when he was old and shabby and about to be burned with all the other toys after a scarlet fever infection, the nursery Magic Fairy appeared. She was going to turn him into a Real rabbit.

“Wasn't I Real before?”, asked the little Rabbit.

“You were real to the Boy”, the Fairy said, “because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to everyone.”.     

FORECAST OF STUDENT AND GRADUATE NUMBER IN AUSTRIA

The Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research, in cooperation with the Institute of Social Development Studies of the Austrian Academy of Science, elaborated a model of the future development of education in Austria. Elements of this model were taken into consideration in the formulation of the forecast of higher education development in Austria. This forecast constitutes a part of the recent report, published by the Federal Ministry for Science and Research, entitled “Hochschulbericht 1978”.

The following article is based on the part of this report which deals with future numbers of students and higher education graduates in Austria.     

RECALL AND PRINTED‐WORD RECOGNITION OF RECENTLY‐TAUGHT EMOTIONALLY CHARGED WORDS AS COMPARED TO RECENTLY‐TAUGHT NEUTRAL WORDS

This study is an experimental test of the hypothesis that “emotionally charged” words will result in greater learning as measured by tests of “recall” and “printed‐word recognition” than words that are judged to be emotionally “neutral”.

Ten third‐grade subjects were pre‐tested on “printed‐word recognition” of ten words judged by two clinical psychologists to be “emotionally charged” and similarly pre‐tested on ten words judged to be emotionally “neutral.” After equal exposure to both “neutral” and “emotionally charged” words on four successive teaching days, subjects were post‐tested for “recall” and “printed‐word recognition” five days after the last teaching session.

The results strongly indicate for both the “recall” and “printed‐word recognition” that there is a significantly greater retention of the “emotionally charged” words over the “neutral” words. Despite the fact that a significantly greater number of “neutral” words was recognized in print at the outset of the study, the final performance level for “printed‐word recognition” for both the “emotionally charged” and “neutral” words is identical.

The major implications of the results obtained in this study is that the content of reading materials and the methods for teaching them must be revised so that reading deals with events, ideas, and feelings which are emotionally significant to the child, A personally relevant reading program will not only facilitate the task of learning to read, but will capture and explore the feelings and emotions of each child, as well.     

EXPANSION OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

In the Federal Republio of Germany, institutions of higher education will encounter an increase in demand for student places during the 1980's. This demand is expected in the mid‐1980's to reach 850,000 places. At the same time substantial changes, concerning job opportunities for higher education graduates, will take place on the labour market.

The following information is based on the analyses and recommendations, concerning the above problems, which were presented in the report of the FRG Scientific Council (Wissenschaftsrat) entitled “Recommendations on the Structure and Extent of Higher Education”.     

Understanding argumentation about socio-scientific issues on energy: a quantitative study with primary pre-service teachers in Spain

Background Argumentation is an important discourse process in science that needs to be taught and learned as part of a repertoire of strategies to support the acquisition of scientific literacy. Research in science education indicates that beliefs or perceptions and the epistemological orientations of teachers influence their approaches to science teaching.

Purpose The paper aims to illustrate primary pre-service teachers’ understanding of argumentation based on a study using quantitative methodology. In particular, it aims to illustrate how these teachers view quality of arguments and teaching strategies related to argumentation in the context of a socio-scientific issue on energy.

Sample 332 pre-service teachers enrolled in a university teacher education programme in Spain were investigated. Many studies on argumentation have been conducted with small sample sizes of teachers. Hence, given the sample size, the study provides findings that are likely to be generalisable.

Design and methods A questionnaire was administered to the participants. The design of the questionnaire was guided by some existing analytical tools which were adapted for primary education purposes in the context of socio-scientific issues. This adaptation is novel in that the questionnaire items can potentially be used as diagnostic questions to assess primary teachers’ understanding of argumentation.

Results The results suggest that pre-service teachers had difficulty in understanding arguments and different pedagogical strategies to promote argumentation in classroom. For example, they did not understand the role and the meaning of warrants in scientific arguments and their understanding of the use of different kind of strategies is limited to debates, open discussions and experiments. The age range of the participants and the length of teaching experience had no impact on the quality of their understanding of argumentation.

Conclusions Pre-service science teacher education will benefit from incorporation of more robust and lengthy sessions on argumentation. For example, sessions could focus on quality as well as structure of arguments in science and more diverse pedagogical strategies to support argumentation in science lessons, such as the use of writing frames and presentations.     

7th GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF CRE

One of the important events relevant for higher education in Europe which took place in 1979 was the 7th General Assembly of CRE ‐the Standing Conference of Rectors and Vice‐Chancellors of the European Universities (13‐17 August 1979, Helsinki).

The present membership of CRE includes 352 universities and institutes of higher education in 23 European countries.

The following article, written by Dr. Andris Barblan, Secretary General of CRE, reflects major problems discussed during the General Assembly (Editor's Note: This article is based on the paper presented by Dr. A. Barblan at the Seminar “University Today” which was held on 28 August 1979 in Dubrovnik).

For CEPES participation at this conference see page 42 of this Bulletin.     

THE RESTRUCTURING OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE USSR

Great interest is being expressed in higher education circles everywhere and at all levels in the fundamental changes envisaged with regard to the organizational structure and contents of higher education in the USSR. These changes constitute an important part of the restructuring; the “perestroika”, currently going on in all spheres and at all levels of Soviet society.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC CPSU) adopted the Principal Directions for the Reorganization of Higher Education and Specialized Secondary Education. As a follow‐up to that framework document, the CC CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a number of decisions, dated 13 March 1987, aimed at giving substance to and at amplifying the basic principles enumerated. As change in Soviet higher education has been in the air for some time, we were able to preview some of its directions in previous issues of Higher Education in Europe, specifically in No. 4, Vol. XI (1986), pp. 80‐81 and in No. 2, Vol. XII (1987), pp. 83‐84.

As promised in the latter issue, we are now presenting the main provisions of these “Measures”, and “Decisions” via excerpts taken from five documents which were published partly in Byulleten’ Ministerstva Vysshego i Srednego Spetsialnogo Obrazovaniya, No. 6, 1987, and partly in Pravda, 27 March 1987.

The editors are solely responsible for the choice of excerpts as well as for the editorial and stylistic modifications that they believed necessary in order to fit them into the content of Higher Education in Europe.     

An Intelligent Marking Assistant: An Application of Artificial Intelligence in Teaching

We are entering the second computer revolution — described by many as “THE REVOLUTION”. The Japanese have committed themselves to a programme to develop a Fifth Generation of computers — machines that can understand natural language, diagnose problems, and discover solutions. What are the implications for higher education?

This paper argues that the most interesting applications of this new technology are in producing “intelligent assistants” or “powerful tools” in the teaching/learning process. It describes in some detail a particular “Expert System” being used in this role — assisting academic staff with the evaluation of student work.     

WOMEN IN SWISS UNIVERSITIES

The following article is an abstract of the booklet “Frauen an der Hochschule” (Women in Higher Education), published by Mrs. Wiederkehr‐Benz in August 1980, Zurich.>

The article, sent to us by Mrs. Wiederkehr‐Benz, is meant to provide the reader with some complementary information concerning the situation of women in higher education in Switzerland, The article stresses the consequences of early socialization, and later role‐conflicts in performance oriented system of higher education. Similar lines of thought have also been expressed in the articles on the Netherlands and FRG.

Mrs. Wiederkehr‐Benz is a psychologist attached to the"Psyahologische Studentenberatungsstelle” (Centre for Student Counselling), of Zürich's institutions of higher education.     

Accreditation of engineering programmes: European perspectives and challenges in a global context

The EUR-ACE Socrates-Tempus project (September 2004/March 2006) proposed a decentralized European system for accreditation of engineering programmes in the “Bologna process” area (European Higher Education Area) at the First and Second Cycle (FC and SC) level (but including “Integrated Programmes”, i.e. programmes leading directly to a SC degree). In this system, “national” engineering accreditation agencies would continue to award their accreditation certificates and give them an added European value by the EUR-ACE quality label, recognized by all participating agencies: this rather novel way of international accreditation will create a consistent accreditation system of engineering education at the continental scale.

A non-profit Association (ENAEE) has been established for support and supervision of the EUR-ACE system, and is now working, thanks also to two new EC-supported projects, in order to make the EUR-ACE proposals operational and award the EUR-ACE labels.

The background, present status and perspectives of the EUR-ACE system is presented in detail in this paper.