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THE INFLUENCE
OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS
ON THE CONTINUING EDUCATION PROCESSES
L. D. Tyulicheva
Enhancing the role of public-private partnerships (PPPs) is an important element of modernization of vocational education. Activating joint project implementation between the state and business causes change in the socioeconomic environment for continuing vocational education.
The federal center sees the system of secondary vocational education as the most promising area for building public-private partnerships. It is administered by regional authorities and this has led to the establishment of regional systems of vocational education. These mainly train workforce for a given region to meet the demand for staff from local employers. In this way, businesses become interested in partnerships with the continuing education system. The current programs for modernization of regional vocational education systems include activities to enhance their interactions with businesses. The federal budget only allocates funds provided the activities are co-financed by employers. The structure of spending for modernization of vocational education averaged by region is as follows: subsidies from the federal budget account for 12%; funds allocated by a constituent entity of the Federation amount to 59%; 23% is co-financed by employers; and 6% is financed by educational institutions [1].
Officially, higher education institutions, most of which are under federal control, are not part of regional systems of vocational education. However they can play a key role in socio-economic development of the regions they are based in, if they focus on training workforce in priority areas of regional economies and rely on public-private partnerships with regional businesses. The project entitled “Workforce for the Region”, which is being implemented in fourteen regions, is aimed at supporting PPPs. The project’s goal is to involve private companies engaged in priority areas of development of a region to co-finance regional higher education institutions. Cooperative activities of businesses in different sectors of the economy and vocational education organizations cover all stages of the educational cycle: from defining the educational content to assessing the quality of graduates. Any change has an impact on the processes of continuing education.
Vocational education organizations and departments of regional executive authorities responsible for vocational education seek to increase the percentage of vocational education programs developed and implemented in cooperation with employers after their expert evaluation by the latter. The involvement of businesses in upgrading the existing educational programs and developing and implementing new ones helps to sift out unpromising areas of development of professional qualities. Competencies that are not in demand in the real labor process are unpromising in terms of continuing vocational education, because neither employers nor employees will pay for further development of unnecessary professional qualities.
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Support from businesses in the form of scholarships and grants enables more students to be involved in the continuing education processes. The same effect is achieved by targeted educational lending where employers provide educational loans to the best students. Without the involvement of businesses, many educational centers or other educational facilities designed to implement programs for training or retraining of their own or third party staff would not have been established. First of all, these are resource and multi-purpose centers of professional qualifications. They enable the implementation of vocational training programs for different age groups, involving them in continuing education processes. The closer businesses interact with educational organizations in training new workers and specialists, the more likely it is that an employer will seek help from its partner, an educational organization, in order to solve its problems with staff training. In our opinion, it is through joint projects of staff training programs between businesses and educational organizations that PPPs can mainly influence continuing vocational education.
Surveys conducted by the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” as part of the Education Economy Monitoring and the Russian Monitoring of the Economic Situation and Health of the Population, and other surveys have revealed the main characteristics and trends in training staff of Russian organizations. Staff training policies pursued in different organizations are very versatile, but most Russian companies lack a well-organized system for personnel training and development. A very small percentage of personnel of Russian companies are covered by training. In addition to the limited staff coverage, training programs are short in duration. Off-the-job retraining lasts on average from 2 to 4 weeks. Short-term training is the prevailing form of external training offered to the main groups of personnel, such as managers, specialists and skilled workers. Such a duration of programs means that training is not sufficiently profound.
Training activities for different categories of staff vary in scales. High qualification employees and managers are the most trained categories in Russian organizations. They are trained almost in every second organization. Slightly less training is provided to skilled workers (one third of organizations) and office employees (approximately one fourth of organizations). The least training is received by unskilled workers.
The scale of business is an important factor of staff training development: the larger and richer the organization, the more likely it is that its staff is being trained. Smaller entities often finance external training, while large organizations have in-house personnel training and development functions. Companies allocate funds for external training regardless of their financial position, whereas in-house training can only be afforded by financially successful firms. At the same time, even those organizations that have in-house training departments seek services from education suppliers.
Requirements for educational services at different levels of vocational education vary from one sector to another. Traditional sectors (such as industry, construction and transport) cooperate with educational institutions of all levels. New sectors of the economy mainly cooperate with higher education institutions.
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Russian organizations are distinguished by rather intense processes of staff renewal. Research shows that Russian organizations put a special focus on training new hires. They have to train newcomers in positions that differ in status. Training is often provided immediately after the selection process which identifies needs for training among new hires (so-called “entry-level training”).
Forms and areas of training used in Russian organizations are more suitable for solving current staffing problems than for achieving strategic goals of innovation development. To enhance the links between staff training and innovation development goals, conceptual approaches to the role of staff training in solving strategic development tasks should be changed and public-private partnerships in the field of continuing vocational education should become more active.
Bibliography
1. Профессиональные кадры новой России: новые подходы к подготовке // Россия. Третье тысячелетие: Вестник актуальных прогнозов. - 2013. - № 32. Режим доступа: http://www.vestnikrf.ru/journal/post/601/ Дата обращения: 1.09.2013.
Translated from Russian by Znanije Central Translations Bureau
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