Lifelong learning centers as future prospects for development in higher education

Abstract

Educational trends and discussions about lifelong learning are not new, but lately there is enormous interest from the expert and scientific audience about this new educational paradigm and its influence in changing the focus of the overall pedagogical discourse. This changing course of the educational policy towards building a lifelong learning societies, cities and institutions is due to several factors that follow globalization and demographic trends, economic and cultural as well as personal and civic challenges that the world is facing. All of these factors are “pressuring” universities and other educational institutions to redefine their role in the society by achieving some of the goals set by European strategic educational documents. The new role of higher educational institutions is primarily oriented to promotion of knowledge, skills and competencies, developing and nurturing entrepreneurship culture and transfer of knowledge to the economic sector. Hence, to accomplish the symbiosis between universities and the economy sector it is crucial to strengthen their relation and cooperation which will result in greater interaction and mutual benefit. Therefore, lifelong learning is one of the channels that can contribute for accomplishing this by symbiosis between higher education and changing labor market demands. This paper is aiming to prove that creating sustainable and fruitful partnership between higher education and the wider society communities presupposes developing national system for lifelong learning which will significantly influence towards raising the quality of human resources and accomplishing strategic national and regional goals set in the today’s economies based on knowledge, by respecting the differences and individual needs of every stakeholder. We will present the goal and main activities from the Centre for lifelong learning at the Faculty of Philosophy – Skopje at the University “Ss Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje which are aimed to creating European and world standards in educational system of Republic of Macedonia by securing access to quality educational offer for every category of citizens by respecting the principle of inclusiveness and quality in achieving general and specific competences.