Problem-Focused Higher Education for Shaping the Knowledge Society

Background and Rationale

Personal and workplace crises influence negatively the state welfare and work-life balance (Berki & Cobb-Payton, 2005). These socio-economic problems are observed while the emergence of a global high-skills economy stresses the flexibility of work, de-standardization, and the communicative role of technology leading to the growing importance of knowledge as an economic resource. These needs have created the rise of knowledge work, workers, and growing higher education HE demands. Knowledge workers are under continuous pressure to learn something new (Pyöriä et al., 2005). The rise of the need for HE reflects not only a socio-economic demand; there is also an emphasis on a social and cultural transformation. In EU the educational quality challenges posed by the new HE curriculum of the Bologna Process (http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/bologna/bologna_en.html) are remarkable. The compulsory realisation of the new educational policies and practices in the context of the European HE create an impact on every European country.