| Economic crisis makes Estonians study more than ever before | | Print | |
| Agne Narusk | 26.10.2009 | National Affairs - Background reports [en] | ||||||
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This summer has seen more mature students enrolling at Estonian universities, colleges and vocational training schools than any other over the last 10 years. The State, where unemployment is growing quickly (on the 22nd of October 12.1% of the labour force was unemployed) has directed a considerable amount of money from EU structural funds towards supporting studies continuation and additional occupational training
Thus at the beginning of August the Estonian Minister of Education and Research, Tõnis Lukas, spoke before the public and encouraged everyone whose studies were interrupted to return to the classroom. “I encourage everyone whose degree studies had been interrupted at some time to use the support offered by the government to get the qualification which will be necessary in future to find a job”, said Minister Lukas. The economic crisis and limited opportunities in the labour market will not last forever, he added. The Minister had in mind 9.4 million euros (150 million Estonian kroons) that came from the structural funds of the European Union. Up to 1.9 million of this is intended for about 500 vocational training school graduates. Another 4.7 million euros go towards supporting the completion of interrupted bachelor’s or master's degree studies. Approximately 1000 students would be able to use this aid and 2.8 million euros will help 200 doctorate students graduate. It is not a low number if one takes into account that the population of Estonia is 1 340 000 (1.34 million). For the abovementioned amounts of money the educational establishments will get new student places and there were also talks of some kind of student scholarships. All these measures will be implemented during the next school year (2010/2011). Study because of the job Although it is only the second year that the second project financed by European money – free courses for working adults – is running, they have become so popular that after training centres put the lists of students that were accepted in the next semester’s training on the internet, the servers become overloaded because of the huge number of visitors at night. This autumn free courses will be offered to 5,109 people in 38 vocational training centres and applied colleges in all districts in Estonia. According to the State order there are 363 courses in 30 different curricula groups and it costs 1.1 million euros, according to the Ministry. You can study whatever you want: accounting, pottery, cleaning, entrepreneurship, or improve your skills as a cook, welder, music teacher or farmer. There are many courses for widely used skills, such as occupational language and conversational courses for service jobs. 927 people are offered computer courses. Earlier the condition for entering such courses was that a person must be employed. Starting from this autumn, house sitters can also come – pensioners, housewife mothers, carers of elderly or sick relatives, people with disabilities, authors of labour market reviews etc. The condition is that participants must not be registered as unemployed at the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund. The unemployed are offered training opportunities from the Unemployment Insurance Fund. However, even without the support aid of the EU this year the universities and vocational training schools in small Estonia are crowded with students. During the past 10 years, educational institutions have never been filled as much as they are now, school headmasters explained at the end of the summer. For instance, there were so many entrants in one of the vocational training schools of the city of Tartu, which is situated in South Estonia, that some of the applications were not accepted. The deputy headmaster of the vocational school, Mati Rammul, said that this year more school-leavers are enrolling as students. There is also a new trend for more students being of a mature age – those who have already finished school a long time ago, and who have not found an occupation for themselves or those who have lost a job and now want to get a new occupation. The average competition in the Tartu vocational training school was 2.5 people per place. The older, the fewer As research shows, Estonians associate lifelong learning with occupational training. The older a person becomes, the less interested he is in qualification improvement training. Two years ago, the average percentage of adult students in the EU 27 was 9.7. In the neighbouring country, Finland, this figure was 23 and in Estonia only 6-7%. However, there is no reason to be disappointed because during the last 10 years the interest in life-long learning has been constantly increasing. This year, from May until July, 10.9% of adults took part in life-long learning. Comparing these data with the same data of the previous year, one can see that there is more participation in occupational training and degree studies. The participation in hobby courses has decreased a little. In September the Estonian government established the adult education development programme for the years 2009-2013 and its implementation plan. While completing the development program they considered the changes in the economy and labour market. The aim was to increase the lifelong learning facilities and to offer the adults more varied and occupational training. |
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