Definition of CE in the country

There is no clear, formal definition of Continuing Education which can be considered as generally accepted and well-established in the whole country. Although most published documents distinguish between Initial Education and Continuing Education (CE), the latter appears rather often as a diffuse and vague concept, very frequently being mistaken as Permanent Education or Long Life Learning. Confusion between CE and initial vocational training and identification between CE and post-graduation activities immediately following the initial education (namely specialisation courses that are part of master degrees), are also usual.

In this context the EUCEN concept of Continuing Education as any kind of education or training being delivered to those who left the formal initial education system at any level or degree and started to work or have assumed adult responsibilities is not a common definition. Quite significantly we have come across cases where University representatives, having previously assumed the non-existence of CE activities in their Institutions, change their mind when confronted with the above definition. One might say that only now the debate about the very idea of CE is slowly spreading across University institutions.

Historical introduction

Non-formal education in Portugal started in 1964 when the first institute for professional training not depending on the Ministry of Education was created. The objective was mainly to prepare workers for the industrial reorganisation of the country that was taking place at the time. In 1979 several departments dealing with professional training were finally joined under the Instituto de Emprego e Formação Profissional (IEFP — Institute for Employment and Professional Training), depending on the Ministry of Employment, which is still the government agency for professional training in our days. Under the designation of professional training this institute includes both CE and initial vocational training.

Many other institutions either public or private having no formal educative mission offer courses on professional training, both for graduates and non-graduates, of various nature and with different entrance requirements. Since 1986, professional training had a great development due to the Portugal entry to the European Community and the consequent access to the European Social Fund. Between 1986 and 1989 about 980 thousand trainees were involved in professional training activities, the number being 500 thousand for the period 1990-1991.

Public universities, which depend on the Ministry of Education, had no historical reasons, namely financial, to be concerned with CE and to some extent have been kept and kept themselves apart from this process. In fact, CE assumed as such and made by Universities is a very new activity. Seeing CE as a minor activity or even as something that is not a part of the Universities mission are still quite common attitudes. The idea that CE is a function of the University only recently won ground when the Rectors Council recognised that "Universities must become also partners of CE". CE is here understood as an area for University-Society co-operation which, along with research and training of both graduates and post-graduates, must be considered as one of the three main functions of the university.

Higher Education System

Before 1970 there were only four universities in Portugal: Universidade de Coimbra, Universidade de Lisboa, Universidade do Porto and Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. Since 1970 nine new public universities have been created: Universidade dos Açores, Universidade do Algarve, Universidade de Aveiro, Universidade da Beira Interior, Universidade de Évora, Universidade da Madeira, Universidade do Minho, Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro. Although these new universities have been created under the general idea of reinforcing the mission "Services to the Community", being more linked with either regional or sectorial issues, they rapidly lost sight of that initial driving force and became not very dissimilar to each other and to their older counterparts. The Open University also a public university but of a specific nature, was created in 1988. The Catholic University, which is the only non-public university whose Rector seats at the Rectors Council, was founded in 1967.

In the eighties several other private high schools and public polytechnic institutes have also been established. The number of private schools has not stopped to boom ever since. Nevertheless, the polytechnic institutes and most private institutions cannot award doctorates and consequently cannot be considered as Universities according to the EUCEN definition.

Hence, the portuguese higher education system suffered a deep change in the last three decades, eventually unique at European level. The number of candidates has grown four times from 1985 to 1995, polytechnic sub-system was implemented, private higher education institutions have grown at a surprising rate and the access conditions have been altered several times.

At the moment the higher education system can be characterised as a binary system (Universities — Polytechnic Institutes) existing also a dual offer for each sub-system (public ~65% and private ~35%, overall). It may be stated however that the power of public universities to attract students is much greater than that of the other institutions, these remaining almost always as the candidates second choice. So, although in the political setting the polytechnical sub-system is considered as a priority goal, no effective measures have been taken to promote their specificities. Neither were higher education level short courses with specific vocational nature created, an alternative option that a number of other countries did put forward. As the total number of candidates for higher education became recently smaller than the available number of places on offer in the entire high schools system one can thus forecast new changes coming up at a short term.

As far as post-graduate courses in Universities are concerned they are of quite recent creation. They have been more targetted to the training of researchers and to fulfil academic careers rather than being directed to professional specialisation. However things are fastly changing in this field. Although up till now only more "modern" industries were interested in offering jobs for people with post-graduation degrees this trend is also changing which, as a result, contributes to the alteration of both the number and the pattern of candidates, specially for master courses. A programme of the Ministry of Science and Technology for supporting firms that employ Ph.D.’s is believed to contribute to and at the same time to illustrate the new tendency.

Also typical of the Portuguese higher education system is the low rate of adults amongst the students population and the lack of tradition regarding formal part-time courses.

University continuing education

Organisational arrangements

Generally speaking the portuguese universities have not identified key actors responsible for CE and do not have special units in charge of regular services for that purpose. Most of the CE activities are carried out at the level of faculties or departments. Moreover, in general, there is no central strategic thinking at University level and, as a result, co-operation between departments, faculties and universities is incipient. Some departments or faculties that organise CE activities within universities have developped their own support structure, generally by means of department interface institutions, with all the management and financial constraints this implies. It is now increasingly clear that co-operation between departments and faculties is a key issue for success. It will be an obvious way to achieve the necessary critical and financial dimension that will allow stable self-supported UCE activities.

Some universities have already established pilot cross-department structures that give at least some administrative support to UCE. Some of these structures are currently being further developped using the knowledge and experience from the past. Some interesting ideas being addressed are the local education centres of Aveiro University, distance learning courses of Portuguese Catholic University and co-operation between universities in the North of Portugal. The first and the latter will be discussed bellow as existing good practices.

Programmes

There is a lack of information about UCE programmes and student numbers in Portugal. To collect data we sent a simple questionnaire to all portuguese universities. The answers were very few and contained very little information. The only type of programme mentioned was the FOCO programme (continuing education for secondary school teachers).

This lack of information is one of the consequences of how CE has been generally regarded by the universities. Because there are no central units responsible for CE activities, the information is spread over the several faculties and departments and it is, consequently, very difficult to collect. Therefore in this report we concentrate mainly on the results from a study performed by AURN (Association of Universities of the North Region), concerning the CE activities organised in 1996 by the universities of Aveiro, Minho and Porto. This study was based on data collected between February and June 1997, using both paper inquiries and personal interviews. 94 different courses were considered, involving about 3800 students and 6800 course hours. The number of full time equivalent CE students is 0.75% of the total number of graduation students and the number of effective CE students is 8.98% of the total number of graduation students in the three universities. The average number of students per course is 40 and the average duration of the courses is 72 hours.

The CE activities were divided in four main scientific areas: Exact and Natural Sciences, Human and Social Sciences, Engineering and Technology and Medical Sciences. The relative importance of each area in terms of volume of training (number of students multiplied by the number of course hours) is depicted in table 1. The course duration was divided into three categories: short (less than 30 hours), medium (between 30 and 100

hours) and long (more than 100 hours). The relative importance of each type of course is shown in table 2. Once more the percentages were calculated in terms of volume of training (number of students multiplied by the number of course hours). The importance of longer courses is greater for the Engineering and Technology area with more than 80% of the volume being accomplished by courses with more that 100 hours duration. In Health Sciences and Social and Human Sciences about 50% of the volume is accomplished by courses of more than 100 hours and the other 50% by courses of medium and short duration. The courses of medium duration (between 30 and 100 hours) are predominant in the area of Exact and Natural Sciences with more than 65% of the volume of training. This is probably because this is the category where most of the FOCO courses fit in and the Exact and Natural Sciences is the area in which that programme is more active.

All the courses considered in the study used traditional classes, sometimes with paper or video support. The use of distance learning was never mentioned. More than 60% of the courses had classes during the normal working hours. The rest of the courses had classes essentially in the afternoon or over weekends. The use of evening classes was only observed for two courses.

Financial arrangements

The main funding sources for CE are the State Budget, the European Social Fund and the Social Security System. Funding from private companies, other private institutions and the students themselves is very difficult to assess but has probably a non-negligible importance in the global funding of CE. In the study from AURN, 25% of the courses were co-funded by the students and 17% by other funds than the State Budget, the European Social Fund or the Social Security System. Unfortunately the precise amount of funding from either the students or the other could not be determined.

The main government agency dealing with CE is, as expressed before, the IEFP (Institute for Employment and Professional Training). This institute, dependent on the Ministry of Employment and Professional Training, was responsible for 14 of the 21 operational programmes active from 1990 to 1993. Two other nation wide operational programmes were the PRODEP, managed by the Ministry of Education and the PEDID managed by the Ministry of Industry and Energy. The remaining five operational programmes were managed either by regional authorities (Regiões Autónomas dos Açores e da Madeira) or are related to training in very specific areas. PRODEP includes two important programmes for UCE: FOCO (secondary school teachers) and PROFAP (civil servants).

As previously mentioned, IEFP is responsible for the management of an important part of the CE funding. This institute is also responsible for the management of a network of public and semi-public training centres, where it spends a significant part of that funding. University interface institutions have been using the funding from IEFP mainly for training of non-graduate students.

Universities have had a significant participation in the FOCO programme and have used PROFAP mainly for the training of their own employees. Funding of UCE from private companies and the students themselves is especially important in the economy, management, engineering and medical areas. The public universities do not have any state money in their budgets for CE activities, there is no regional support for UCE and the local support is meaningless at global level, although some tentative experiences are being developed.

UCE staff

Most teachers involved in UCE are university professors. Table 3 depicts figures from the AURN study: percentage of actions having teachers exclusively from the university, exclusively from outside the university and both from university and other institutions. Teachers recruited from outside the university account for a significant figure, mainly when courses include disciplines not covered by the usual university syllabus: typically courses developed for industry.

The lack of motivation of university professors for UCE activities is one of the most important obstacles for its development. There is no official academic recognition for CE activities in the public universities and, consequently, motivation appears often linked with financial incentives. However, experience shows that universities can not compete against the private CE companies that pay directly to professors. Because of this situation and the lack of strategical approaches by the Universities an important part of CE activities for graduate people is organised by private companies although often using, ironically, teaching staff from the universities. This is especially true in areas like Economy, Management and Engineering.

Assessment and quality

The typical UCE certificate is an attendance certificate. However in some cases it is possible to choose between that type of certificate and a certificate where some kind of assessment is implicit. Assessment is mandatory in actions supported by official programmes like FOCO (as in most of the actions funded by IEFP), although the rate of failure is usually low. Some universities are trying to achieve better ways of assuring the quality of course contents but the follow-up and evaluation of the existing activities is, yet to some extent, unsatisfactory. Once more FOCO is a special case, as evaluation of the activities is included within the programme itself. Because there is no national accreditation policy if one excludes CE teachers, in general, and the FOCO Programme, in particular, accreditation of qualifications is usually made by the CE providers themselves.

Existing good practices

Local education centres of Aveiro University

In 1995 the University of Aveiro decided to create a network of local CE centres in nearby towns. The first pilot centre was installed in São João da Madeira in collaboration with the city council and local cultural associations. This centre aims at developing courses tailored to suit local industry needs, supporting common initiatives with teachers associations and contributing to the cultural development of the town. Responsibility for the courses is shared among the University and the City Council: the University being responsible for the scientific and pedagogical aspects and the City Council for the building and the administrative staff. Courses are offered to technical staff from local companies, teachers and the general public, throughout a broad spectrum of subjects. During its first year the courses provided by the centre included among others language courses for businessmen, a piano course for music teachers, a course on environmental geology for secondary school teachers, a course on voice for the general public and an advanced course on mechanical engineering.

AURN

The Associação das Universidade da Região Norte (AURN — Association of Universities from the North Region of Portugal) is currently running a project named Universidades do Norte — Horizonte 2000. Among other actions, this project aims to define a model for UCE in the North Region of Portugal. The members of AURN are Universidade de Aveiro, Universidade do Minho, Universidade do Porto, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro and the Regional Centre of Oporto of the Portuguese Catholic University. The Association is studying the current situation of UCE at regional level both from universities and market points of view, looking at UCE structure in other regions of Europe and trying to define a model that will allow some degree of co-operation between the several member universities.

Most of the data presented in this document was extracted from a study performed by AURN concerning the UCE activities in the northern region. The Association is currently running a programme of specialisation courses for the staff of a new semiconductor plant in the North of Portugal. It also conducted an innovative CE course on Concepts and Methodologies in the Management of the Coastal Zones, teachers coming from the member universities, industry and other institutions. Similar courses on forestry, environment, telecommunications and energy are still being planned. The Association aims to publish an annual catalogue of the UCE activities in the northern region of Portugal, as a way to jointly promote the courses organised by the several universities and the AURN itself.

Problems, obstacles and opportunities

There is still a great unawareness of the importance of CE, either within the universities or in the society. Speaking at large professionals are generally not willing to go back to school and are not convinced of the utility of doing so.

The lack of involvement of universities in CE on one hand and the low visibility of the existing UCE activities on the other hand do not contribute to the necessary change of mentalities, although the existence of some recent good experiences indicates that visibility is certainly going to improve in the near future. One of the problems in the dissemination of the good practices is the incipient networking, either at national or international level. Only a few universities are members of international networks and there are no national networks dealing with the CE subject.

The direct transfers from the state budget to the public university budgets are limited to Initial Education and Research, not including CE activities. This is in accordance with the fact that no political initiatives concerning CE have been taken in Portugal, either at a governmental level or at a nation-wide University level, to match the ones experienced in the last decade in other european countries. The UCE funding must consequently be obtained through the existing funding programmes, the client companies or the students themselves, in a competitive way with other CE providers. Competition in an open market is something that universities are historically not used to do and that is very difficult to achieve with their regular organisational structures. The Universities are not yet sensitive enough towards the implementation of new organisational structures able to deal with UCE. Generally speaking, universities lack well-defined strategies and the central co-ordination of the existing activities is rare. This implies a dispersion of the available means and allows the existence of incoherent policies within the same university.

The teaching staff motivation has also been an important obstacle to the development of UCE. In public universities there is no academic recognition for teaching CE courses and the time spent in these activities is not considered for calculation of the global teaching time. Experience shows that universities cannot compete with other providers of CE only by means of financial incentives. As a consequence, an important part of CE courses for graduate people are not organised by the universities, although they use their teaching staff significantly.

Despite all that, there are encouraging indicators. The productive sectors are becoming more and more aware of the general benefits of continuing education. There is already a vast market for Continuing Education and Training of University graduates. There is a growing consciousness that the relative low level of qualifications of portuguese active population when compared with other european countries can only be overcome if CE is systematically implemented. Universities are just getting increasingly aware of their role in this field and starting to understand both their responsibility to provide CE and the importance of CE as a way to have a positive impact on the society. As a consequence some Universities are seriously addressing strategical issues related with Continuing Education.

It may then be stated that Universities should move steadily into CE and we forecast that they will do so. As a result the offer, today centred at institutions outside the formal educative system, will be substantially altered both in terms of spectrum and quality.