STRUCTURAL CHANGES AND THE PARADIGM TRANSFORMATION OF THE GOVERNMENT POLICY ON LIFELONG PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

Abstract

This conceptual article is based on the statistical data analysis of the changes in mid- and long-term needs and in the scope of personnel training within various systems of lifelong professional education. These data are used to hypothesize the potential direction of the development of this educational system in Russia and the conceptual priorities of the state policies in the area of professional education. The trends related to structural changes in lifelong professional education have never been systematically analyzed in Russia. Foreign statistics shows that such trends have first appeared in other developed countries. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to draw government officials’ and heads of professional educational institutions’ attention to the importance of restructuring the strategic goals of the educational system development, to identify the problem domain of working out the strategies for educational institutions and for the development of the professional education sphere. This purpose is achieved through the analysis of the macroeconomic parameters showing the need in personnel trained within professional educational programmes of various levels and through comparing the identified trends to those in other countries. The results show that the need for training personnel through the system of vocational professional education is much higher than that for training within traditional programmes of professional and higher education. The reason is the intensification of the technological progress and the objective incapability of the traditional educational programmes to provide specialists with competences required by the rapidly changing demands. As a result, the government and employers have to reconsider the priorities of professional education development and the ways to stimulate it. Still, there can be some limitations driven by weakly institutionalized system of interaction within the education management system, among employers and educational institutions.