Formal, non-formal and informal learning and higher education graduates' reemployment: evidence for Portugal

Unemployment rates among Portuguese Higher Education (HE) graduates have been rising. This trend becomes quite obvious when we compare Portugal and other European Member States whose labor markets have been facing similar difficulties. In fact, Portuguese graduates are not only more prone to facing unemployment but they are also enduring long term unemployment as a result of the current unemployment crisis. Among the main reasons for this situation is the mismatch between the supply and demand for qualifications due to the inability of the Portuguese labor market to absorb higher skills (chimney effect). Nevertheless, competition in demand and the need to overcome labor productivity’s weaknesses create the need for actions (education, training policies and labor market interventions) to improve the match between supply and demand for HE qualifications in order to prevent social disinvestment and to foster inclusion and economic development. In the short and medium term, given the economic and social development strategy, adjustments will consider the need to redefine the HE graduates’ skills and profiles throughout education and training. In this paper we are concerned with the effects on HE unemployed graduates’ reemployment of additional education programs compared to informal and non-formal learning activities. We take life cycle theories and Willis (1986) as our main theoretical reference. We use the database of the Adult Education Survey (AES 2007) developed by the Statistics Portugal, following methodological guidelines issued by EUROSTAT and adopted in all European Union Member States. The survey covers adult participation in formal and Non-Formal Education and informal activities and comprises 11289 cases (individuals). When assessing the main influences of education, non-formal and Informal Learning activities on (re)employment, we use AES data on labor market transitions between two consecutive periods. We control for parents’ education and occupation, individual’s previous schooling, gender and age. Our research methodology is quantitative. We use chi-square independence tests, correlation analysis and tests for equality of proportions. We expect to highlight the ability displayed by non-formal and Informal Learning to redesign educational formal skills, with a special insight into HE skills. The Portuguese HE system tends to be theoretically focused and practical internship is rare even in this post-Bologna phase. Accordingly Non-Formal Education - especially vocational training tailored to labor market occupations - could prove to be a most useful resource in reshaping graduates’ profiles and promoting their employment/reemployment. Informal Learning is also expected to play a major role in the processes of skills acquisition and mobilization related to practical knowledge, thereby enhancing social networking and employability. We aim to assess how much HE programs and non-formal and Informal Learning contribute to enhance graduates’ employment opportunities and to identify pivotal areas for change in HE and non-formal programs.Formal, non formal and informal learning; higher education graduates; employability

Success/Failure in Higher Education:how long does it take to complete some core 1st. year disciplines?

Despite the enormous increasing in Higher Education (HE) enrolment during the last decades in Portugal, retention rates remain very high when compared to most European Union countries'.This outcome is particularly meaningful for a set of 1st year's critical matters which failure severely conditions subsequent success as they are part of the scientific domain's basic knowledge.In this paper we investigate this feature for ISEG (School of Economics and Management of the Technical University of Lisbon) and consider its Pedagogic Observatory database which includes more than 1,500 individual data relative to the four graduation programmes. As relative failure expresses frequently under the form of longer time spells needed to complete thgose disciplines in this paper we adjusted a duration model (with control group)in order to assess the main determinants of the "survival" probabilities. After having controlled for ability, the results we obtained from Cox Regression show that the economic and social status of the family of origin, especially mother's and father's school level and occupation go on influencing students' results although not so meaningfully as in previous educational phases. Also the specific graduation track - Economics, Management, Mathematics applied to Economics & Management and Finances - appear to be deeply associated with success or retention. Nevertheless, the main determinant of relative success/failure is the student's situation towards the labour market, a meaningful proportion of them having to perform a paid occupation to afford to pay for education costs. Therefore our policy reccommendations are twofold: i) to shed light on the need for a more robust Government's Social Policy towards HE students especially now that the Bologna Reform imposes an heavier budgetary burden upon students; ii)to emphasize the finantial, organizational and syllabuses' reforms that HE institutions need to develope in order to capture and keep the "new publics" namely adult students for whom combining study and paid work represents the only available funding source.Higher Education; Critical Matters; Time to successfully complete; Duration Models; Finantial Constraints; Portugal.

Interruptions and failure in higher education: evidence from ISEG-UTL

Abstract Failure in Higher Education (HE) is the outcome of multiple time-dependent determinants. Interruptions in student’s individual school trajectories are one of them and that’s why research on this topic has been attracting much attention these days. From an individual point of view, it is expected that interruptions in school trajectory, whatever the reason, influence success in undergraduate programs either this success is measured by time required to obtain a degree, the scores obtained in some more “critical” subjects in these programs or the number of enrolment registrations. Nevertheless, performing a paid job during interruption may in given circumstances positively affect academic success on account of the combination between learning and occupational experience The study of interruptions’ impact on failure in HE is also important to help Education institutions at all grades to think about changes in organisational procedures, class timetables, syllabuses contents or teachers recruitment and training in order to fight this problem. From a social and political point of view, interruptions are also a matter of concern since failure in HE affects individual’s lifelong learning opportunities, distort public funding allocation efficiency to HE institutions and create lag effects in the desired/planned outcomes of HE production functions. So, research on the impact of interruptions on failure in HE is important to support policy measures definition related to the articulation between Upper Secondary and HE programs. In previous research we have shed some light into the determinants of failure in 1st year of HE studies using longitudinal data on ISEG’s undergraduate students. A further insight into this database revealed the existence of a meaningful number of students with interruptions in their school trajectories either in the transition from Upper Secondary to HE or within HE programs. In this paper our major concern is to find some evidence on interruptions effects on HE failure among ISEG students using a life cycle approach with control group. We are interested in knowing whether the above mentioned effects are gender and/or specific graduation program neutral. We also want to search if work experience may counter balance the effect of interruption on academic success. We hope to be able to derive some useful recommendations to address policy making in the fields of pedagogic methodologies in HE, articulation between academic and occupational learning in the framework of Bologna Chart and public funding/fellowship policies in HE.Key words: Portuguese Higher Education; Interruption; Failure; Adult Students; Bologna Chart; Policy Implications

Skill Development Patterns and their Impact on Re-employability: Evidence for Portugal

Abstract: With employment and labour crisis training for (re)employability reaches the highest importance and absorbs an increasing share among public active labour market policies. Provided that retraining is adequate shorter unemployment spells can be observed in the transition between jobs. Therefore duration models seem to be quite adequate to model the time intervals between previous and subsequent occupations and the kind of skills /training acquired in between deserves most attention among the main covariates. In this paper we adjust such a models for POrtugal on the basis of data obtained from the Portuguese Statistical Office's Employment Survey.Transition between jobs; unemployment duration; retraining; skills; POrtugal; Employment Survey

Reinforced soil with geosynthetics - hands-on learning (PBL) using sand and paper

An elective module on geosynthetics was designed and made available to Civil Engineering students (5 years’ integrated masters). This paper reports a hands-on activity using sand and paper, adopted as part of a problem-based learning (PBL) model and the feedback collected in 2011/2012 using questionnaires. The model and its main features are briefly described, particularly the problem on soil reinforcement with geosynthetics. The students’ feedback and some of their outputs are presented to highlight how simple and relatively cheap activities can contribute to learning and create a positive impact on students. The success of the PBL approach is enhanced by managing expectations, as well as giving adequate support and feedback to students

A comprehensive approach towards academic failure : the case of Mathematics I in ISEG graduation

Despite the enormous progress in graduation completion rates along the last decade, academic failure in Portuguese Higher Education is still attracting concern. This is particularly true for some 1st. year critical subjects as Mathematics. Most research and analyses on the issue are focused upon either the “academic” or the “non academic” determinants of failure whilst it becomes more and more obvious that the explanation, or at least an important part of it, resides in the interaction between those two sets of features. Having developed previous research on the basis of the former factors to elucidate failure rate in ISEG graduation, we are now analyzing the joint influence of both kind of determinants. For that purpose we rely upon students’ information retrieved from ISEG Pedagogical Observatory Database and the outputs of a Survey on Attitudes Towards Mathematics 1 (SATM 1) which has been especially redesigned and addressed to 1st. year students

Skills Dynamics and (the Need for) Longitudinal Data

Seminário do Departamento de Economia do ISEG 30 de Março de 2004Skills dynamics analyses are frequently carried on the basis of synchronic data, namely the one provided by firms' Employment Records. As this kind of surveys are designed to depict formal employment, not only separation spells but also most infra annual flows are not taken into consideration. Neither is there any data on vocational training and job experience, as well. Empirical evidence we have been obtaining from some previous research points both to the importance skills development strategies are taking along those non-employment spells and also to some qualification strategies which encompass both job-to-job and job-to-unemployment (inactivity) /unemployment (inactivity)-to-job flows. Also, analyses usually developed generally fail to take into consideration the influence exerted by economic cycles upon individual trajectories, in which skills development decisions are also supposed to play a major role. Therefore, we'll try to stress the adequacy both of duration models and longitudinal data on which those models should rely in order to shed light on the above mentioned features

Entre Predadores’: relações com a natureza a propósito da reintrodução do lince-ibérico

O presente estudo debruçou-se sobre as percepções sociais, representações e apropriações dos grandes predadores selvagens em Portugal aprofundando o caso da reintrodução do lince-ibérico. Uma recolha e análise de representações mostraram uma visibilidade particular do lobo-ibérico, nomeadamente na literatura portuguesa, por contraste com uma presença cultural discreta do lince ao longo da História desde a mitologia grega à medicina medieval. Estas espécies, historicamente consideradas como “nocivas”, revelaram ter tido também um carácter ambivalente e simbólico junto dos humanos. Configuram-se, nos contextos contemporâneos, como emblemas de conservação da natureza, sendo alvo de inúmeras apropriações de que o lince-ibérico é um particular exemplo como processo de objectivação da natureza mas também como elemento de nova construção identitária na comunidade rural. A partir de uma pesquisa etnográfica, desde 2012, em duas áreas do Alentejo que incluiu 94 entrevistas semi-estruturadas a actores chave residentes, foram obtidos dados sobre a memória, o conhecimento ecológico local e práticas associadas aos predadores. Analisaram-se percepções e valores face ao lince, às espécies selvagens e à natureza. Categorizações empíricas realizadas pelos informantes revelaram o modelo ocidental dualista de identificação da natureza, configurando humanos e não-humanos em diferentes domínios, mas onde se podem identificar elementos de outras ontologias e novas tendências na relação humanos-predadores. Associações de pureza, beleza, natural, domínio, controlo foram exploradas em torno do conceito de selvagem. A expressão “Entre predadores”, referindo-se também aos humanos como sendo predadores, sumariza uma perspectiva émica sobre o mundo natural, uma organização cosmológica e uma visão dos animais não-humanos como espelhos que permitem criar identidade pessoal e cultural. Face ao processo previsto de reintrodução de lince-ibérico no sul de Portugal, analisaram-se posicionamentos e opiniões que tornaram perceptível a contestação de actores locais e conferiram também visibilidade a expectativas sobre a coexistência com esta espécie selvagem. Os discursos, enquadrados nos debates contemporâneos da Antropologia, confirmam influências neoliberalistas globais em questões locais de conservação da natureza. Por outro lado, os actores locais exibem múltiplas orientações face à natureza e vida selvagem e consideram os factores não-económicos no regresso de uma espécie ameaçada de extinção. Espécies emblemáticas selvagens reúnem um consenso moral para a sua protecção. Críticas locais sobre as áreas protegidas e projectos revelam um modelo imposto de conservação da natureza em que é necessário um diálogo mais próximo entre actores e administração. Caracterizou-se um cenário etnoecológico de coexistência entre humanos e predadores e em que são expectáveis a apropriação da espécie pelos actores locais bem como a sua participação em matérias de conservação da natureza. Este caso de estudo reforça e exemplifica o papel da Antropologia aplicada, tendo aplicado uma abordagem etnográfica para conseguir um conhecimento aprofundado e descrição densa de uma trama da conservação da natureza, e integrado num projecto interdisciplinar.The present study was concerned with the social perceptions, representations and appropriations of the large wild predators in Portugal with emphasis on the case of the reintroduction of the Iberian lynx. A collection and analysis of representations demonstrated that the Iberian wolf possessed a high visibility, namely in Portuguese literature, in contrast to the discreet cultural presence of the Lynx throughout history from greek mythology to medieval medicine. These species, historically considered to be “vermin”, were also seen to have had an ambivalent and symbolic character to humans. They appear, in contemporary contexts, as emblems of nature conservation, being the target of innumerable appropriations. The Iberian lynx is a particular example of the process of objectification of nature, and also an element of a new construction of the rural community’s identity. Ethnographic research was conducted since 2012 in two areas of Alentejo, including 94 semi-structured interviews with resident key actors, during which data were obtained on the memories, local ecological knowledge and practices around predators. Perceptions and values referring to the lynx, wild species and nature were analysed. The informants’ empirical categorizations revealed the Western dualistic model of nature identification, configuring humans and non-humans in separate domains, while elements of other ontologies and new tendencies in human-predator relations can also be identified. Associations of purity, beauty, natural, dominion and control are explored with reference to the idea of “wildness”. The expression “among predators”, also referring to humans as predators, summarizes an emic perspective on the natural world, a cosmological organization and a vision of non-human animals as mirrors also used to create personal and cultural identity. Considering the foreseen Iberian lynx reintroduction in the south of Portugal, positions and opinions were analysed. Local contestation was explored as well as expectations of local actors towards coexistence with this wild species. The discourses, among contemporary debates in Anthropology, confirmed global neoliberalistic influences in local questions of nature conservation. On the other hand, local actors exhibit multiple orientations with respect to nature and wildlife, and consider non-economic factors upon the return of a threatened species. Emblematic wild species gather a moral consensus for their own protection. Local criticism concerning protected areas and projects indicated an imposed model of conservation in which a closer dialogue between actors and administration is needed. An ethnoecological scenario of coexistence between humans and predators is described. Appropriation of the species by local actors and their participation in matters of nature conservation are expected in near future. This case study is an application of an ethnographic approach that yields a dense description of a nature conservation process and human/ non-human relationships. It stresses and exemplifies the role of Anthropology in an interdisciplinary project

ISEG Undergraduate Students: Determinants of Academic Performance

Abstract Over the last three decades there have been in Portugal a quite huge public investment in the school system and the implementation of an effective compulsory education. These changes came along with the democratization of school experience. Moreover the increase in the number of students in higher education is a national goal that have been pursued by education policy. Families, with fewer children, the perception of higher studies as a way to move up in the social ladder and better life conditions have an active behaviour on behalf of their children education. However, in spite of all the government and parents investment in children education, school failure is a major problem that affects all levels of education. At university level school failure affects mainly undergraduate students in their first year of studies1. This problem is a major concern for those involved in higher education political definition and this is why it becomes a research field of much interest. This paper intends to shed some light on the determinants of academic performance of undergraduate students of the School of Economics and Management in their first year of studies. Following Dollado and Morales (2007) we will measure success in academic performance using the exam´s marks in three 1st year subjects with decreasing degrees of mathematical complexity, Maths, Economy 1 and Management and Economic History. In this paper we go further than Dollado and Morales (2007) since, besides type of school, specialization track at high school and marks obtained at the university entry-exam, we study the role of individual characteristics, family socio-economic background and pre-university school trajectory on the academic performance. We put an emphasis on the effect of transitions from public\private or private\public schools and from in-home to out-home.Success/failure in Graduation; Examination Marks; 1st. Year Critical Subjects; Family's Social & Economic Background; Previous Schooling; Portugal

Research Evaluation, Bibliometric Indicators and Impact on Knowledge Development

With increased globalization and international competition among research centers and universities, bibliometrics regained a new élan. As a matter of fact it became the most important criteria – sometimes the only one - used for the evaluation of scientific papers and thereby for the faculty’s classification and progression in the academic and research careers. Accreditation procedures and the building of international rankings reinforced this trend as well as the major role played by reference repertoires. This self-feeding and circular process deserves a deeper insight mostly because it generates important knowledge waste. This is so because non-English speaking scientific communities usually face meaningful obstacles to access to the abovementioned repertoires. And accordingly, their scientific papers risk becoming unknown or underutilized even though they develop matters and topics which are relevant for their authors’ societies. At the same time, progression in academic or research careers go in parallel with the reproduction and transmission of official knowledge and generally neglect alternative thinking. In this paper we shed light on these issues. After a brief literature review, we analyze the situation of a Portuguese higher education research institution under both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis which results confirm the above referred main trends