Pedagogical Centre for Universities
04.07.2023
Background
Training young people with the skills and competencies required by market players is key if we are to foster market growth in IT and other sectors, especially where the desired growth is linked to digital efficiency gains.
As regards the training/education of young people, academic training is often criticised for being unable to keep pace with rapidly changing technological developments, especially in the field of IT. The average age of teachers in Hungarian IT training is very high, a large percentage of the teachers working there are not in the market but only teaching. The IT sector, on the other hand, needs up-to-date market knowledge. The aim of the education fund initiative is to ensure that the knowledge gained by students during university classes is truly up-to-date, practical and from industry, so that after graduation they have the skills and knowledge that market participants need.
The aim of the large-scale national project “Programm your future!” is to increase the number of IT graduates in the coming years, thus contributing to reducing the current shortage of qualified IT staff, which is becoming increasingly important from a national economic point of view.
The main objective of the project is to improve the labour supply, support the development and training of IT competences in higher education so that the training system provides marketable knowledge that meets the needs of economic operators. The project works to introduce students to the technologies used by ICT companies. The project is supported by the Operational Programme using ESF funds. In the project, IVSZ is responsible, among others, for the concept of the so-called training fund and the implementation of the service.
The aim of the programme component is to expand existing and new cooperation between higher education institutions and ICT companies working in their environment, and to involve market specialists of companies in the practical training of universities. A priority objective is to integrate the practical knowledge and experience of companies into higher education IT curricula in order to provide students with practical technological, market and business knowledge and competences in addition to theoretical knowledge during their studies. This element of the project supports the development of cooperation between the two countries and provides practical support for concrete educational cooperation.
The biggest advantage of company tutoring is that it can bring real market knowledge to universities that will later be required by employees in practice. It can also greatly facilitate recruitment as these courses provide a platform to meet students, identify talented students who can later be employed by their company as interns or as full-time employees.
Reserve is also important for universities as there is a general feedback that universities do not have competent teaching staff due to lack of practical knowledge or capacity.
Key areas: Flexibility, DevOps, AI, cloud native, data science, test security, low-code platforms, embedded system technologies, 5G.
How does it really work?
A brokerage company was selected to perform the service of unifying teaching. Universities can identify their tutoring needs at the beginning of the academic year. For example, they have an AI course but no instructor. The university can send a request for a tutor to the intermediary company performing the service (the company was selected as a result of a procurement process). The university may have a specific ideal tutor it would like to invite (but cannot pay), or it may approach this intermediary company without a specific person (in which case only the fact of the demand for the tutor is fixed). If the university has a target person, the mediator hires and invites the person, enters into a contract with the person, facilitates the process to completion, and pays a fee to the instructor. If the university does not have a person in mind, the mediator searches among former teachers who have already been used within the service (pool of teachers), or if there is no person meeting the specified search criteria, he searches an IT company’s database for a suitable person. Invited guest speakers become members of the pool immediately after the first teaching session. The resulting database (pool) is owned by the project. For GDPR reasons, the list of trainers (nor the list of companies employing external trainers) is not public, but only information on the types of training conducted and the priority areas of training is published.
So far this reserve has been realized 4 times (4 procurements in 1-1 academic year)
A checkpoint has also been introduced to ensure the quality of the rigorous trainer placement processes. The need to include a guest lecturer from the market crystallises in universities well in advance of the start of the academic term, at which point they need to present their tutoring needs. Once the lecturer has been selected, the tutors and the university should jointly submit the description of the planned course to a “body” (3 members) which will check that the course covers eligible areas (areas where knowledge is currently lacking in the labour market). A topic description may be rejected if it does not provide market knowledge (e.g. introduction to basic calculus) or if the topic is not requested/requested by market participants. Of the Board members, 2 are IT specialists and 1 is a labour market expert. Each expert presents his/her own position, reasons and makes a decision by consensus. The “Board” considers the description of each topic.
Instructor needs may include an instructor to develop both hard and soft skills. For example, an IT life course was supported to develop soft skills by presenting project management methodologies and practices. IT companies complain a lot that recent graduates do not have appropriate soft skills, for example project-based thinking.
След като приеме описанието на темата, обучителят се подготвя за курса и изнася лекцията. Това може да бъде един урок или цял курс. След обучението, посредническата компания завършва административния процес и плаща на инструктора. Проектът също така извършва съответното плащане към посредника на редовни интервали от време. (от бюджета на проекта — такса за обучител + завършване на целия процес)
Details
Website
Target audience
Digital skills for all
Digital skills for the workforce
Digital skills for ICT professionals
Digital technology
Artificial Intelligence
Digital skills
Big data
Telecommunication
Level
Advanced
Expert
Funding of the good practice
Public
Type of initiative of the good practice
National initiative
Country providing the good practice
Other