Competitive strategies of vocational schools and universities in implementing continuing education programs

Abstract

Open statistics is analyzed to examine the successful strategies of implementing continuing education (CE) programs by vocational schools and universities. The study identifies the industries that benefit from those successful strategies the most. In vocational schools, such industries include medicine, oil and gas production and chemical processing, transport, mining and metallurgy, electrical engineering and telecommunications, pedagogy, tertiary sector, architecture and construction. As for higher education, CE programs are pursued most actively by medical, multidisciplinary, pedagogical, law and economics, and polytechnic universities. A relationship has been established between CE enrollment and general student population. Implementation of CE programs contributes to financial sustainability of vocational institutions. Successful strategies may ensure from 25 to 40 percent of the total budget in educational institutions that specialize in oil and gas production and chemical processing, medicine, electrical and power engineering, ICT, law and economics. Efficient strategies include narrow specialization and collaboration with strategic enterprises, while online marketing tools play a relatively small part. Continuing education was found to contribute little to financial sustainability of large national universities despite higher CE enrollments, barely accounting for five percent of their total budget. At the same time, a number of small institutions of higher education (regional branch campuses and private universities) can generate over half of their income from CE programs, university status playing a guiding role in student attraction. Analysis of university strategies shows that low interest in implementing CE programs for the good of regional industries is related to the absence of CE-based indicators in annual monitoring reports and the lack of established policies for integrating CE programs into higher education.