PROCSEE Project Kicks Off

The partners who conceived the PROCSEE project came together in Maribor from Malta, Czech Republic and Croatia on 6th and 7th November, to launch the project and prepare a plan of activities. From a thematic perspective, the project will tackle four areas of current policy-concern in Professional HE / Higher VET, namely:

  • Alignment of PHE/HVET with regional/local development strategies
  • Promotion of PHE/HVET as an alternative route through tertiary education, in particular to respond to skill shortages and increase employability of graduates
  • Organising and monitoring student placements in the world of work, in particular increasing the quantity and quality of available student placements, so as to provide for meaningful learning experience and preparation for employment
  • Use of Personal Learning Environments (personalised, flexible distance learning opportunities, delivered over the internet), and in particular their role in further education (both for purposes of re-training/re-qualification and enhancement of skills).

Operationally speaking, we aim to:

  • Identify specific challenges in each of the 4 areas outlined above
  • Use best-practice research to find appropriate policy drivers and tools to address the challenges
  • Customise the approaches to the specific circumstances of countries and institutions in the CSEE region
  • Validate the policy solutions through a programme of monitoring, impact assessment and evaluation

All the activities within PROCSEE will be developed with the context of a set methodology for problem identification and policy-response design, which will occur at a Regional Centre for PHE Excellence. In this respect, we plan to:

  • Establish a regional centre for PHE Excellence
  • Pilot the PROCSEE problem identification and policy-response design approach at the centre
  • Recruit further institutions and countries to join the centre

In the next few months, the project will launch a first series of calls for experts to begin the policy development work, in preparation for a first policy forum to be held in Autumn 2016.