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Prokop Ernst: Educational Tranung for Professional Tasks and Ademanands – Postgraduate Education in University

Relying on a high level of scientific development, German university education was determined for a long time by the „offer factor”, while the „expectancy factor” of professional-social requirements was considered to be of secondary importance. In the last few decades, however, the one-sided dominance of elite scientific education has been replaced by the need for mass education. Social-economical progress has also required graduates starting their careers to possess an extensively applicable knowledge. The new professional colleges, which are also engaged in the didactics of education, have been trying fulfill this need. Didactics appeared first as the „binding element of construction” among the specialized branches of science, and then began integrating into the educational mechanism of certain scientific fields, thus legitimizing itself. The contradiction between the narrow scope of university education on one side and the requirements of practice on the other is expected to be dissolved by postgraduate/continuing education. However german universities ignored postgraduate/continuing education for a long time institution; as several professional organizations, chambers and special institutions have realized. In doing so the universities lost contact with their „regular attendants” after graduating. Now, when universities wish to provide postgraduate education, they have to consider the offer of the rivals, which have obtained authority in several professional fields during these decades. Now universities, beside maintaining their professional rank, also have to care for the postgraduate education of their graduates as well as for the general scientific education of broad circles of society. In the course of this continuing education, universities are supposed to consider regional and local needs, the „genius loci”. Thus, a new element and the key to the future for universities looking for their place lies in continuing/postgraduate education, which is still not utilized to the extent it could be.

MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 96. Number 1. 77-85. (1996)

Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Prokop, Ernst: Universität Regensburg, Lehrstuhl Pädagogik I. D–8400 Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31.

 
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Magyar Tudományos Akadémia