The Flexible Professional in the Knowledge Society: Required Competences and the Role of Higher Education

Abstract

Re e iiThe REFLEX project is a joint collaborative project of the following institutes The REFLEX project is funded by the EU 6th Framework Program (Contract No: CIT2-CT-2004-506-352) and several national funds. The project involves partners from sixteen countries (Austria, Belgium/Flanders, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK) and is coordinated by the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market from Maastricht University. For more information, see: http://www.reflexproject.org.iii AcknowledgementsThe REFLEX project (acronym for 'Research into Employment and professional FLEXibility') is a large scale international project that has been carried in 16 different countries. It focuses on the demands that the modern knowledge society places on higher education graduates, and the degree to which higher education equips graduates with the competencies to meet these demands.In the project three studies were carried out: (1) a country study highlighting the main structural and institutional factors that shape the relation between higher education and work in the different countries involved in the study; (2) a qualitative study on graduate competences in the knowledge society; (3) a survey of higher education graduates in these countries (for more information, see www.reflexproject.org). The results of the first two studies have been published separately (Koucky, Meng and Van der Velden, 2007;Arthur, Brennan and De Weert, 2007) 1 . The current report presents the general findings of the third study, the survey among graduates.A project like this cannot be carried out without the effort and involvement of many colleagues. In the different countries the following persons participated in the project (the coordinator is always mentioned first, the rest in alphabetical order): Austria (Paul Kellermann, Helmut Guggenberger and Gunhild Sagmeister), Belgium/Flanders (Walter van Trier, Kathleen de Rick), Czech Republic (Jan Koucky, Petr Vorisek), Estonia (Tiina Annus, Liis Kraut), Finland (Osmo Kivinen, Jouni Nurmi), France (Jean-Jacques Paul, Lisa Bydanova, Julien Calmand, Philippe Maalouf ), Germany (Ulrich Teichler, Oliver Bracht, Marek Fuchs, Harald Schomburg), Italy (Roberto Moscati, Angelo Di Francia, Michela Frontini, Michele Rostan, Matteo Sgarzi, Marco Vinante), Japan (Keiichi Yoshimoto, Yuki Inenaga, Naoyuki Ogata), the Netherlands (Jim Allen, Han van Dongen, Timo Huijgen, Paul van der Kolk, Hans Rutjes, Egbert de Weert), Norway (Liv Anne Storen, Clara Arnesen), Portugal (Virgilio Meira Soares, Armando Rocha Trindade), Spain (Jose Gines Mora, Lourdes Badillo Amador, Amparo Gómez López, Daniel Martinez Aceves, Jose María Nyssen González, Luis Vila), Sweden (Kenny Petersson, Daniel Samuelsson), Switzerland (Sabina Schmidlin, Katrin Schönfisch, Andrea Witmer), United Kingdom (John Brennan, Lore Arthur, Rod Hick, Brenda Little, Alan Woodley). These people were responsible for the national surveys and contribute...

An Interdisciplinary Practical for Multimedia Engineering Students

“…Burns et al [18], after analyzing the relationship between employability and professionalism, conclude that the specific knowledge acquired while pursuing a university degree is often insufficient to guarantee employment. Some competences have been identified as predictors of a successful pursuit of employment [19].…”

Job requirements in the hospitality industry: Technical or general skills? The dilemma for academic education

“…A recent work (Kong, 2015) pointed out that previous work experience, although considered more important by students than employers, is not a "must" to look for a job, because employers consider the required experience to be very embedded. However, this point is controversial as other studies argued that professional expertise is associated with a higher probability to be employed (van der Velden & Allen, 2011;Humburg & van der Velden, 2013.…”

A Tool to Assess Architectural Education from the Sustainable Development Perspective and the Students’ Viewpoint

“…In particular, the sustainability competency map for generalist architecture degrees developed (see Appendix B), based on the results from the EDINSOST project [92], facilitated the definition of a comprehensive collection of sustainability learning outcomes required in AE to allow architects to practice in line with sustainable development. On the one hand, asking the students to assess their learning outcomes, which has been demonstrated as a useful and reliable tool to assess the actual outcomes acquired [77,148], provides a broad perspective of the scope of their education, complementing existing works, which have focused only on competencies related to design or building design. In addition, organizing the outcomes according to the CRUE four "cross-curricular skills for sustainability" permitted the concise address of the cross-cutting competencies for sustainability to complement the existing evaluation of AESD, which has ignored them in all cases, as well as the holistic perspective of SD, and the environmental, social and economic dimensions when further detail was needed, contrary to prior works that only occasionally considered social and/or economic dimensions of sustainability [28,43,53,61].…”