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NETWORKING COOPERATION IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF LIFELONG EDUCATION PROGRAMS
G. P. Yurieva
The article deals with the features of the networking form of implementing educational programs under the current conditions. The author describes the forms and models of educational organizations' networking cooperation with business, research and other non-educational institutions.
Key words: networking, networking to implement programs, lifelong education, educational organization, professional retraining, professional development.
The processes of the market economy and labor market establishment that became so dynamic during the last decade have a great impact on structuring the employment of the country's population, which fairly mirrors the general structure of the economy, and is transformed under the impact of its changes. According to research data, only 20% of the world labor force work in their original professions. Statistic data for the last 5 years demonstrate that only 63% of Russian tertiary school graduates work in professions that correspond to their basic professional training. As early as during the first two years after graduation from professional educational institutions, approximately 42% of young people change their professions. Whereupon it is stated that tertiary education of about 45% of them was funded by the state [1, p.12].
As we state the fact that some tertiary and secondary special school enrollees are initially focused on the profession that do not correspond to their potentials, talents for certain types of activity and sometimes their dispositions and interests, we should pay attention to the fact that during the period of a student's education, employers' requirements for a specialist's training and demand for his or her profession on the labor market undergo changes. Furthermore, under the conditions of the market economy, practically everyone has to change jobs often and even change one's profession 5 to 6 times in the course of one's life. This is primarily why professionally educated people increasingly tend to be in need of educational services. As a result, lifelong education becomes an especially relevant subject. Experience has shown that a specialist who is trained in several professions or who has undergone professional retraining is more mobile, and the chances of his or her finding a job is sufficiently high.
As A.M. Novikov examines the peculiar features of postindustrial economic development, he turns his attention to the extensive media discussion of the following theme: the Russian economy makes a comeback and the vocational education system is unable to provide it with necessary personnel. He calls it a misapprehension because "it is not the former industrial economy of Russia that is reborn, but rather a fundamentally different, new, postindustrial economy is born and developing in our country" [1, p.20]. The networking form of educational program implementation based on cooperation and interaction of education and business, science and other non-educational organizations seems relevant for
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creating the infrastructure of lifelong education. The most important point is as follows: the network form of educational program realization presupposes pooling material, personnel, laboratory and other necessary resources by research, industrial and other organizations that permit training personnel at a high quality level.
Article 15 of the Federal Law of the Russian Federation "On Education in the Russian Federation" adopted in 2012 stipulates the concept of "network form of educational programs implementation". According to Cl. 1, Article 15 of the Law, the networking form of educational programs’ implementation "makes it possible for the educatees to master the educational program with the utilization of resources of several organizations engaged in educational activities (including foreign ones), as well as with the utilization of resources belonging to other organizations if need be." It is also stated that research, medical, cultural, sports and other organizations in possession of the resources needed for carrying out teaching, practical and on-the-job training and carrying out other types of educational activities provided by the respective educational programs can take part in realization of educational programs in a networking form on a par with the organizations carrying out educational activities.
At present, tertiary schools are in an active search for new forms of interaction with business, public authorities and industrial organizations in order to "adjust" education for the labor market. Thereby, networking cooperation can be viewed not only as a resource of education development, but also as a resource of quality training and further employment of graduates. In this case, the networking form of the implementation of a professional training educational program is a stable, well-organized cooperation of educational organizations between themselves and with the subject from the external environment in order to improve the efficiency of using the joint potential of the education system, optimizing the resources in use, and reaching the quality level of graduates training that would meet labor market requirements. Educational organizations using the networking form of training organization employ various models: the horizontal one (with participation of the same level vocational education institutions), the vertical one (the organization of joint activities of different level educational organizations), and a mixed one (with the participation of research institutions and organizations as parts of territorial and industry-specific clusters, etc.).
It should be noted that networking cooperation also can be realized in different forms: shaping a single supporting infrastructure (business incubators, technology parks, resource centers, small innovative enterprises, tertiary school departments and industrial enterprises jointly used for on-the-job training), the creation of joint services (career guidance, student enrollment organizations, employment of graduates and monitoring their professional career, retraining and postgraduate training of personnel, maintenance of a data and methodological portal, the creation of a joint library system, joint use of sport facilities, medical institutions, public catering facilities, etc.); the development of a networking educational program and academic mobility programs (applied baccalaureate, student exchange projects, probations, on-the-job training).
An analysis of the practical application of networking forms of educational programs implementation by educational organizations permitted us to find out the following principal approaches: (a) a networking educational program is a part of a
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large-scale networking project whose realization presupposes pooling personnel resources, integration of training and research activities, and integration of training and probation; (b) a networking educational program acts as a consequence of network infrastructure creation on the basis of, e.g., a tertiary school subdepartment, presuming the integration of specialists, authors and developers of programs; (c) a networking educational program is an individual network project or its part within the framework whereof integration at the program users’ level takes place; (d) joint international educational programs, including double- and triplediploma ones are networking programs by nature; (e) probations and practical training of students and lecturers at the partner organizations, as well as inviting professors, are networking ones by nature.
In summary, one can conclude that the implementation of networking educational programs by a tertiary school has a number of advantages. The main ones are as follows: the creation of a single resource space (information and communication, research and methodological, substantial and technological, psychological and diagnostic, social partnership, personnel, finance and legal, material and technical ones); modernization of educational activities in compliance with changes in demand at the educational services market; changes in the range of realized programs depending on the needs of the market for skilled personnel in certain processions, ensuring their quality and accessibility; ensuring flexibility of the training process through realization of individual paths of educatees' mastering the program contents; improving the quality of graduates' professional training and their subsequent employment in the professions they have learned; possible shaping of a lifelong education system; reducing costs and expenses through efficient use of resources.
Bibliography
1. Новиков А. М. Постиндустриальное образование [Текст] / А. М. Новиков // 2-е изд. доп. - М.: Издательство «Эгвес», 2011. - 152 с.
2. Федеральный закон Российской Федерации от 29 декабря 2012 г. № 273-ФЗ «Об образовании в Российской Федерации» (утверждена 04.02.2010 года Президентом Российской Федерации) [Electronic resource] / http://www.rg.ru/2012/12/30/obrazovanie-dok.html - (access date: 25.03.2015).
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translastions Bureas
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