Human Resource Skills, Lifelong Learning & Employment

Instructor: Panagiotis Kalogerakis

This course explores the multidimensional relationship and the key issues between education (formal and non-formal), the organization of work, and the shaping of the current productive system. It focuses in particular on the role of learning and the development of human capital skills, highlighting the challenges that dominate the political agenda: the globalized economy and knowledge, the skills crisis, and the green and digital transitions.

Work is changing, becoming deregulated, with its quality increasingly questioned, and precariousness taking center stage. At the same time, participation in Lifelong Learning (LLL) remains limited, and the debate around the skills mismatch frames LLL as a policy space grounded in soft governance, instrumental logic, and individual responsibility.

In this fluid context, LLL must both aim at reskilling and upskilling the workforce—who are increasingly held responsible for their own employability—and address issues of inequality, exclusion, and job insecurity.

Course Content

• Introduction to the Field: Basic conceptual definitions
• Exploring the Concept of Skills – Critical perspectives
• Lifelong Learning and Work: Analyzing the "non-convergence of a relationship"
• Quality in Lifelong Learning and Work
• National and European Policies for Skills Development and Promotion of Lifelong Learning
• The Role of the OECD in promoting human capital skills policies: Studying the large-scale PIAAC assessment
• Policy Tools for Enhancing Employment and Linking Education and Work (I): Individual Learning Schemes (Individual Learning Accounts and Vouchers)
• Policy Tools for Enhancing Employment and Linking Education and Work (II): Micro-credentials