Employers' demand for and the provision of part-time higher education for employees

ABSTRACT

Presented here are findings of an enquiry into the nature and the level of employers' demand for part-time higher education for their employees and into the provision of courses by the institutions. The project was sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council and involved a survey of private and public sector employers with a labour force of 164,000. This survey showed an overall low level of demand for part-time higher education but there were differences between and within the sectors. Although the general preference was for relevant courses, there was no uniform interpretation of the term. In planning the provision of higher education, institutions had difficulty in establishing the nature and the level of future demand. Since part-time higher education is localised, regional economic and social trends and factors influencing them have to be considered. In this paper attention was focused on Wales, but findings of this enquiry have relevance for other areas, and suggest that there is a need for regional centres to act as permanent channels of communication between employers, employees and institutions, if these are to serve local communities and industries more effectively.