Zafra, de Lucas Demare

INTRODUCTION

Our research project, which examined the inspirations of current students in several institutes of higher education in three countries of the Partium region, is not entirely without antecedents. It is primarily the work carried out in the CHERD-Hungary Research Centre and in the Doctoral Programme of Pedagogy at the University of Debrecen that should be mentioned. The series of publications titled Region and Education discussed the findings of the research projects launched by CHERD-Hungary in the early 2000s and the eight volumes in the series so far contains a large number of articles and studies on the topic of adult education and adult training1_{. Also worth} mentioning is a recently completed HURO project examining the processes of lifelong learning in the border region, which was jointly implemented by the Partium Christian University and the Debrecen Reformed Theology University, Teacher’s Training College. The above works were partly theoretical and historical in nature, partly included statistical analyses; we can also find empirical studies among them. On the other hand, however, it should be noted that we were not aware of any large-sample empirical study of exclusively adult education and training in the region concerned.

In the present study, we only examined the medium- and long-term academic plans of the students participating in the HERD research project with a few questions, which already takes us over to the area of andragogy and lifelong learning (LLL). We deem the discussion of these questions important because finding employment on the labour market, as well as the continuous development of professional and general competences becoming a reality on the labour market, orient the employees of the future toward continuous learning and training. In addition, even though the LLL concept and programme arrived with some delay in the East-Central-European, and even more so in the Eastern European region, over the past ten to fifteen years, the examined countries made significant efforts and had initiatives to catch up and reduce the gaps in these areas (GHK 2010).

In the analysis of the questions, we were confronted with two sets of problems. The first of these concerned the interpretation and the use of certain concepts, such as adult training and adult education, which were not defined in the questionnaire, even though it is known from experience that these technical terms are not clearly understood by those outside the field concerned (not to mention the differences across cultures/countries). However, since we always used these two terms in conjunction, and therefore, even in the absence of an accurate definition, respondents (primarily full-time students) could understand it as formal education/training, without making 1 Papers related to this topic fi rst appeared in Volume I of Region and Education edited by Gabriella Pusztai, which appeared in 2005, included the following Éva Nagy, Péter Csaba Szabó& Anna Szerepi: Helyi kezdeményezések a harmadfokú képzésben [Local initiatives in tertiary education], as well as Györgyi Szilágyi, Gábor Flóra & Gyula Ary: Humán erőforrások a romániai Bihar megyében [Human resources in Bihar County of Rumania]. Th e papers in the volume titled Régió és oktatás:a Partium esete [Region and Education: Th e Case of Partium] edited by Tamás Kozma & Tímea Ceglédi and published in 2010 were Katalin Ábrahám & Zoltán Tőzsér: A felnőttképzésben résztvevő partiumi hallgatók munkaerő-piachoz

való viszonya [Th e relationship of adult education students in the Partium region to the labour market], Erzsébet Ádám: Felnőttképzés gyerekcipőben [Adult education in its infancy], and Erika Juhász: A felnőttképzés rendszere a Partiumi térségben [Th e system of adult education in the Partium region].

any institutional distinction between the two. Further, interpretation problems may arise from the concept of postgraduate training (training after receiving a degree), which was a possible answer to an earlier question. Even though in the answers it clearly transpires what forms of education, and especially what types of institutions the creators of the questionnaire had in mind, it was not possible to clarify the concepts of adult training, adult education and postgraduate training, as well as the relationships between them.

In case of one of the questions (What training would you like to participate in the future?), the possible answers included BA/BSc, MA/MSc, Ph.D. and postgraduate programmes. It is primarily a higher education approach, rather than an adult education/adult training aspect that this question refers to, and therefore we shall not ponder on this question in the present analysis. We shall examine, however, the answers to three questions that are closely related to the adult’spossible education and adult’s training inspirations of the respondents. These questions are the following:

• If you could not find work to meet your expectations within a few months, what would you do?

• If you cannot find a job in which you can use your degree, are you willing to participate in adult education, adult training programmes?

• What influences your decision whether you participate in an adult education/adult training programme?

TRANSITORYSOLUTIONSINCASEOFDIFFICULTIESFINDINGEMPLOYMENT

Recently, there has been an increasing length of period between the time of graduation and finding employment on the labour market. There are several economic and social reasons for this, which are outside of the scope of this paper. However, it is indisputable that in this transitory period service providers may have a particularly important role. The question is: to what extent is the individual capable of controlling his or her own path and to use the available opportunities?

More than a third of the respondents (36.5% of the respondents) chose the answer “I would wait and continue to search,” and the result was similar also in a breakdown according to year. This is followed by two answers with similar values: “I would go to work abroad” (22.4%) and “I would take any job” (20.2%). On the one hand, the results confirm the well-known and almost commonplace fact, namely that about a 20–25% of young people think of working abroad as the solution for the future. On the other hand, a significant group of young people also show flexibility by way of willing to take up work requiring a different type and level (usually lower) of education if necessary. In addition to the flexibility towards the labour market, we should also mention the existential difficulty that a significant proportion of young people are (or may be) forced into. Lower, but also similar proportions of the respondents chose the answers “I would registered myself as a job seeker” and “I would register for courses” (9.9% and 9.4% respectively). Participation in adult training programmes shows an insignificant difference across the years (distribution between 6.9% and 13.2%), and with the exception of third-year students (where adult training was the third most frequently chosen answer), training was the fourth option chosen in order of the importance.