ABOUT PROJECT - Structural problems
Croatia is a country that has clearly recognized the utmost importance of building knowledge-based society. With rapidly growing information in any scientific discipline, changes in the production and information technology, oscillations of economy and the dynamics of labour market, the academic knowledge acquired during schooling period becomes rapidly obsolete and inadequate for the requirements of the employees. The European ideal of 50% of academics in the population in ages between 18 and 30, could just partly contribute to resolving this problem, due to inconvenient demographic situation in Croatia, and the lack of young people. Therefore, the life-long learning is particularly important way of increasing the level of the competences and skills in population as only 6,5% of population have the university degree, and further 3,5% the degree from specialist schools. For that group of students the LLL paths are the only feasible entries to a higher education qualification (data source: Croatian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2005). This concept is in line with key EU initiatives such as: relaunched Lisbon strategy (2005), ET2010 work program (Barcelona Council, 2002), Lisbon declaration (2000). The conclusions from the Ministerial Bergen Conference also stress the importance of the institutional implementation of the LLL principles for the success of Bologna Process 2005 – 2007. The complexity of changes within certain areas as well as complexity of job demands indicated that the part of life-long learning should be related with the approaches to teaching and learning offered at the university level. This is also encouraged by the Croatian Law of Science Activities and Higher Education (2003) which in articles 76 and 84 includes LLL programs within the university context.
Need analysis:
The need for rethinking the position of universities in regard to LLL and continuous education is of special importance to the transition countries that have to catch up in modernization of their economies and become both compatible and competitive in global society. For that reasons it is necessary that LLL should become an integral part of the institutional missions of the universities, as an important aspect of their public responsibility, but also the chance for contacts with real needs of mature learners. Although the Croatian universities are still predominantly oriented toward their core business of teaching and research designed to follow a straight line from undergraduate to doctoral studies they have recently with joining Bologna process become more sensitive to such discourse. In order to respond to the societal needs for supporting the professional development and upgrading of competences of former graduates the University of Zagreb has realized that it has to expand its primary mission adding the new dimension of the new component of LLL as specific educational service to the higher education graduates. The insight into present situation at the University of Zagreb reveals that out of the 33 University constituents some of them have a tradition of offering LLL programs like School of medicine which is mainly associated with the requirements put forward by the professional medical association and the system of credit accumulation needed for re-licensing. In more recent times especially with the rapid development of the modern technology, technical faculties are also involved in development of special courses ordered to fit the needs of external clients such as big companies or governmental bodies. In other fields such activities occur at the level of individual engagements as between individual experts and clients and are not visible at the institutional level.
Demonstration of possibility for need address:
The best way to formulate the general strategy regarding the regulations and
infrastructural support in this domain has been seen through the Structural Measures Tempus project by short term intervention that would allow for the Croatian universities to develop a model of institutional support to LLL and continuous education as an integral part of Bologna process as well as to strengthen capacity of university managers and academic community in this domain by learning from the EU examples of best practice.
Project relevance:
In such circumstances many issues remain unclear from the institutional perspective such as the intellectual property, use of brand name, multiple employment, financial gain or loss. Specific topics within the general strategy of university wide LLL policy that should be also addressed are: need ssessment for LLL of different target groups (senior or disabled persons, etc), recognition of prior learning (formal and informal), level of courses and certification procedure, advice and guidance for mature students, approaches to teaching adult audiences, use of distance or blended learning approach. The similar experience has the University of Split which covers mainly the same disciplines as the University of Zagreb and has been confronted with similar problems in this area.
Project elaboration:
The project proposal has been developed through the initiative of the University of Zagreb supported by the EU Consortium members who were recognized as the leading HE institutions in this domain. The University of Krems has been recognized as best suited to act as the grant applicant because of its high reputation and experience with LLL learning, particularly in the research of the field.
