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LIFELONG PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION AS A FACTOR FOR LEVERAGING WORKFORCE POTENTIAL AND SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
N. E. Kolesnikov T. N. Kosheleva
The continuity of professional education (which under the new law "On Education in the Russian Federation" [1] is provided in two main forms: secondary and higher professional education, with the latter being divided into bachelor's, specialist's and top qualification programs) implies continuing improvement and development, taking into account both the individual’s and society’s needs. Today and in the coming years (at least until 2015), one of the priorities in the development of professional education is to develop professional standards in basic professions (groups). By request of the President of the Russian Federation, at least 800 professional standards should be developed before the year 2015. Given the many thousands of skilled blue-collar professions and white-collar jobs in sectors of the national economy, the "professional standardization" of work in Russia may last at least until 2025.
In late 2012, the State Duma amended the Labor Code of the Russian Federation to include the concepts of "professional standard" and "employee qualification" as part of the implementation of the Presidential Decree dated May 7, 2012. In accordance with this amendment, the professional standard is a characteristic of employee qualification that is necessary for undertaking professional activities. In turn, employee qualification is defined as the level of knowledge, abilities, professional skills and experience of the employee [2]. Certification of activities and professions according to professional qualifications, and modernization of existing professional qualification characteristics, as well as working conditions and workplaces in general, involve relevant innovative transformations in the content, composition and structure of educational standards for training, skills upgrading and retraining of workers, employees, managers, etc. Apparently, all these processes exist, and always have existed, suspended only in periods of economic downturns or reforms, such as during the period of "fundamental change" in this country in the 1990s, in order to resume in largely new processes of continuous development, which we have observed in recent years. What makes the current processes different is that the challenge of improving the efficiency of the economy is focused, as never before, on a radical qualitative change in the nature, structure and content of the labor force in the framework of its establishment and development - from human resources to human capital. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, equally profound improvements are expected and are increasingly taking place in the utilization and realization of professional qualification potential of the workforce for integrated modernization and innovative transformation of production in order for the continuity of both technological and professional education processes to provide sustainable development of economic processes.
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Today, large-scale modernization and innovation transformations are widely known, in particular in the system of professional education, mainly in educational institutions. At the same time it appears that very little attention is paid to the role and development of the sub-system of professional education or professional training that is intended for supporting continuous upgrading of skills and retraining of the existing workforce. This requires the advance preparation of not only an academic support base for those professions that are promising in terms of the labor market, but also of relevant jobs, which are usually highly technological and fairly paid. All this should encourage employees to make additional training, retraining, etc. In this respect, the provisions of the new law on education stating that additional education (item 14, Article 2) and professional training (sub-items 1 and 4, Article 73, Chapter 9) do not lead to an increase (change) in the level of education seem to us to be disputable. This is a very important issue, in particular in terms of promoting professional training of employees of small businesses, which according to the national economic development strategies should grow in numbers and performance levels. However, no professional education institution provides training of entrepreneurs and personnel for this sector, which usually employs people who have sometimes and somewhere learned something from a large arsenal of small business aspects (organizational, financial, legal, etc.). The effectiveness of this sector of the economy is to a great extent hindered by insufficiently trained employees of small business, especially in innovative industrial manufacturing. In our opinion, this challenge could be successfully overcome by "Professional Training" as one of the areas of "Professional Education" by relying on a wide range of available opportunities for professional training, retraining and skills upgrading in blue-collar professions and white-collar jobs by mastering specialized educational programs for secondary vocational education. In this case, professional training can be provided by educational organizations, including training centers. However, it is important that such professional training, especially when it is aimed at mastering a new blue-collar profession or white-collar job, and small business competencies (in a wide functional range), grant such businessmen and their employees the right (based on successful completion of training) to raise their educational level. However, as mentioned above, the legislator does not support this idea [1].
The development of professional and educational standards for relevant professions and specialists will solve a number of problems that are critical for the efficient utilization of graduates from professional education institutions. First, a scientifically and practically justified approach to selecting economically and socially strategic professions and specialties including their functional substantive characteristics and qualification requirements of employers is established as early as at the stage of development of a professional standard. Second, an educational standard which constitutes the arsenal that graduates will bring to the labor market (i.e. the employment environment controlled by employers) includes (or has to include) counter demands to employers in terms of conditions for the efficient utilization of young specialists that should be generally recognized and included in the professional education standards. First of all, workplaces at enterprises (in organizations), including working conditions and safety, should match the level and quality (qualification) of workforce training. Remuneration, which most often serves
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as the most important indicator of working conditions in the broad sense of the word, is determined by the labor market, and the educational standard can only indirectly influence it, especially when the employer evaluates a young specialist. Thus, professional and educational standards are (or, to be more precise, have to become as soon as they are developed and implemented) the main means (method) for balancing demand and supply of skilled workforce in the labor market. Also, very importantly, their relationship acts as an ultimate mechanism for improving the quality of training in the system of professional education. This means that in this context, the continuous system of professional education will be much less criticized by employers for its inability to provide the right specialists, or for a poor level of training. Equally important, the system of professional education will, in turn, become enabled to evaluate, in terms of educational and professional standards, whether the level and quality of training of graduates match the level and quality of technological and other working conditions offered by the employer. In this respect, by far not everything is balanced, and often it is not due to the fault of professional education, but due to insufficiently strong material and technological base of production and labor. This is demonstrated, in particular, and first of all, by the high deterioration of fixed capital in the national economy. In the last decade, deterioration of fixed assets increased to reach 45.7% in 2010 (2000: 43.5%). At the same time, investment in buildings and structures grew (from 40.4% in 2005 to 42.6% in 2010), while investment in machinery, equipment and vehicles, i.e. the most active part of fixed assets, declined (from 41.1% to 38.6%, respectively) [3].
New approaches not only to the development and implementation of professional and educational standards, but also to the use of the resulting professional qualification potential of the workforce to reach the required level of performance should be expected to make Russian business upgrade fixed capital, including equipment of workplaces, in a more active and innovative manner. The current implementation of the program to create 25 million highly technological and fairly paid jobs by the year 2020 will make an important contribution to achieving this goal. The continuity of this work is organically linked with relevant processes carried out by institutions of professional education.
References
1. Федеральный закон «Об образовании в Российской Федерации». Российская газета от 31 декабря 2012, № 303. [Электронный ресурс]. Режим доступа: http://www.rg.ru. Дата обращения: 24.01.2013.
2. Госдума ввела понятия «профессиональный стандарт» и «квалификация работника». Деловая газета «Взгляд» от 23 ноября 2012. [Электронный ресурс]. Режим доступа: http://www.vz.ru/news/2012/11/23/608627.html. Дата обращения: 20.01.2d 3.
3. Регионы России. Социально-экономические показатели: сб. ст. - М.: Росстат, 2011. -990 с.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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