This survey seeks to collect information about innovative practices in higher education that have the potential to enhance the labour market relevance and outcomes (LMRO) of higher education. These practices may include those already implemented as well as practices that are still in planning.
Click here to download an overview of all the questions in this survey.
Please note that to provide you with sufficient flexibility in the description of your practice, some questions are grouped or cover multiple aspects. For example: "If others wanted to replicate your practice, what advice would you give them? Are there things you would do differently if you were to start again?"
The survey is for higher education institutions in Austria, Hungary, Portugal and Slovenia. We invite those persons who are involved in the planning, set-up, implementation or continuous development of a practice relating to one or more of the eight areas below to submit practices.
Practices may range in scope from institution-wide activities to individual teaching practices, at any level of formalisation. Respondents may make multiple submissions of practices that they are working on or have worked on in the recent past. In this case, each practice should be submitted separately.
We estimate that the submission of a practice takes around 30-40 minutes.
Practices can be submitted until 31 July 2021.
Invite your peers: If you know a colleague from a higher education institution in the four countries who would be well suited to submit a practice to this Call for Practices, please invite them to participate by sending them the URL of this landing page as you see it in your browser.
The following eight areas were created to help categorise existing LMRO practices. Each of the eight areas describes a different way to connect higher education and the labour market, and contains several elements:
- Monitoring and ensuring the continued relevance of the educational offering;
- Adapting curricula, the mix and flexibility of programmes, and qualifications to respond to evolving labour market demands;
- Using teaching practices, learning environments and assessment methods to equip students with skills valued by employers, including transversal skills;
- Supporting teaching staff to keep abreast of innovation and societal challenges linked to their discipline, and to reflect this in their teaching;
- Building a common understanding of graduate skills through collaboration with employers and creating trusted mechanisms for students to signal their skills;
- Using labour market information to guide study choices (enrolling in and/or switching study programmes, and/or choosing specialisations) and career decisions;
- Supporting students to enrol and succeed in study programmes with high labour demand;
- Meeting the needs of learners who seek up/reskilling through adapting curricula, the mix and flexibility of programmes, and qualifications.
Some practices may relate to several of the eight areas. For instance, involving industry practitioners as guest lecturers in some of the teaching of a course could help ensure the continued relevance of the educational offering (area 1). At the same time, this collaboration may also support the academic teaching staff on the course to keep abreast of innovation and societal challenges linked to their discipline, and to reflect this in their teaching (area 4). The survey provides the possibility to assign a practice to multiple areas.
The information collected through this Call for Practices will be used to inform a series of peer-learning activities organised by the LMRO Partnership Initiative until February 2022. These activities bring together higher education stakeholders to share, provide feedback on and learn from innovative institutional practices and public policy initiatives. The first of these activities was held on 30 November 2020 – International Policy and Practice seminar on Labour Market Information for Learners and HEIs.
All higher education institutions responding to the Call will be invited to participate in these peer-learning activities and may be called upon to share insights from their practice(s) as presenters.
In addition, the responses to the Call for Practices will contribute to the development of policy options and recommendations for institutional practices across EU and OECD countries.
The LMRO Partnership Initiative aims to support the adoption of actionable policy options and effective, scalable institutional practices that have the potential to enhance the labour market relevance and outcomes of higher education. It is a project of the OECD and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Culture and Sports, with participation of Austria, Hungary, Portugal and Slovenia.
Technological advances, climate change, the digitalisation of the economy, and exogenous shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic are transforming labour markets. This requires workers to adapt to changing jobs and environments, regularly developing new knowledge and skills. The fast pace and unpredictable nature make it impossible to fully anticipate the skills today’s students will need to succeed in their future careers. Higher education institutions are responding to these developments with innovative approaches that are responsive to learners and labour market needs. Sharing these approaches brings benefits to learners, institutions and policy makers.
More information about the LMRO Partnership Initiative can be found here.
All information collected through this survey will be securely stored by the OECD and its confidentiality protected consistent with the OECD Data Protection Rules. No individuals will be personally identified in our records or in any resulting publication. If we wish to explicitly link any information provided with the relevant institution in a publication, we will first obtain authorisation from the institution.
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