Universities now play a significantly greater role in further education than they did ten years ago. Further education expert Anke Hanft and education researcher Karsten Speck discuss the changes in the higher education system and look ahead to future challenges.

Around 250 million euros in funding, 101 participating universities, over 370 academic continuing education programmes running on a regular basis: judging by the figures alone, the federal-state competition ‘Advancement through Education: Open University’ has made a significant mark on the German higher education landscape. The programme, which was launched in 2011, came to an end in the spring of this year.

The aim of the project – which was scientifically supported from the outset by continuing education expert Prof. Dr Anke Hanft – was to forge closer links between vocational and academic education. “We had provided the key impetus for the planning of the programme with an international comparative study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education,” reports Hanft.

That study found that, by international standards, the German vocational education and training system had too little interaction between vocational training and the higher education system. This was a major drawback that needed to be addressed. This is because close integration between continuing vocational further education and academic education not only enables more flexible career paths, lifelong learning and greater opportunities for advancement for individuals. “Advanced scientific training also promotes the knowledge transfer between universities, businesses and society,” emphasises Hanft.

“C3L has set new standards.”

A good ten years after the launch of the federal-state competition, the situation has changed fundamentally: “We have reached important milestones in recent years,” says Prof. Dr Karsten Speck. The education researcher, along with Hanft and Dr Annika Maschwitz – now Professor of Lifelong Learning at Bremen University of Applied Sciences – was involved in the academic monitoring of the competition. As part of a nationwide consortium of universities and the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE), the experts examined the organisation of the competition, supported the projects during their implementation and helped ensure that the outcomes – such as new degree programmes – were more firmly established within the universities.

From this perspective too, Hanft and Speck regard the programme as a success: for example, alongside the new continuing education programmes, teaching staff have been trained and new digital teaching and learning formats have been introduced. The latter have long since become part of undergraduate teaching as well. New forms of cooperation between businesses and universities have been established, and new target groups have been reached. “This is an asset we can capitalise on, including with projects in Oldenburg,” says Speck.

University access without Abitur

And that’s not all: centres for further education have been established on a permanent basis at universities throughout Germany. The University of Oldenburg was a national pioneer in this field with the C3L – Centre for Lifelong Learning, founded in 2006 from predecessor Institutes. “The C3L has set new standards,” says Speck, pointing to another key aim of the federal-state programme: Opening up universities to non-traditional target groups – through advanced scientific training programmes, but also through initiatives such as the Children’s University, guest student programmes or the so-called ‘Z-exam’, which enables working adults without an Abitur to gain access to university studies.

Hanft and Speck conclude that all this has led to further education at universities becoming more professional and gaining greater political recognition. Nevertheless, both also identify shortcomings: for instance, access to higher education remains difficult for working people with families, the unemployed and certain occupational groups, such as those in the health and care sectors. “Most continuing education programmes are fee-based and therefore do not appeal to these target groups at all,” explains Hanft.

One reason for this is the precarious status of further education and further education centres, as Speck, together with colleagues from the Open University in Hagen, TU Dortmund and the CHE, highlights in a brochure setting out the findings of the accompanying research. Although the higher education laws of the federal states regard further education as a core task of universities alongside research and teaching, there is a lack of systematic financing. Hanft says that politicians and universities must address this challenge if they are to take this mandate seriously.

Flexible study structures are important

In their view, however, public universities should in principle be allowed to generate income through fee-paying study programmes: “This enables innovations that have a knock-on effect on undergraduate teaching and research,” she emphasises. Hanft and Speck advocate a hybrid model in which fee-funded degree programmes, alongside free programmes, open the door to higher education for a variety of target groups – from nurses to managers. One way to achieve this, says Speck, is to make degree programmes more flexible than before, thereby making it easier for interested individuals to study part-time and in structures and formats that suit them.

Both researchers are aware that this remains a challenge: so far, many degree programmes have been too inflexible. To make undergraduate degree programmes attractive to working professionals, for example, their modular structure would need to be strengthened. “And we need to move away from sticking to relatively rigid standard periods of study,” says Hanft. The Covid-19 pandemic in particular has shown just how important flexible study arrangements are. “In this way, we can provide sustainable support for lifelong learning at universities,” says the expert. However, to ensure that the achievements made so far are not lost once the major funding programmes come to an end, advanced scientific training must move to where, in Hanft and Speck’s view, it belongs: at the centre of universities and thus at the centre of higher education culture.

As part of the federal-state programme “Advancement through Education”, the University of Oldenburg has, in addition to providing academic support for the overall programme, co-ordinated the joint projects PuG (Development of part-time study programmes in nursing and health sciences) and mint.online (Establishment of part-time study programmes in STEM subjects) as part of the federal-state programme “Aufstieg durch Bildung” (Advancement through Education), and was involved in three further projects. This has resulted in a series of continuing education programmes at various higher education institutions.

To the original: https://uol.de/aktuelles/artikel/lebenslanges-lernen-als-kultur