Studijų Vilniaus Gedimino technikos universitete turinys ir Lietuvos ūkio struktūrų reikmės

Abstract

The paper describes the experience of restructurization and development of study system at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU) since 1990. VGTU is one of the largest universities in Lithuania and its development has a considerable influence on Lithuanian society. During the reform in Lithuania a binary higher education system was created (see Fig 1): university branch (bachelor, master and doctor degree studies) and non-university branch (professional qualification studies). VGTU study reform was oriented to the market demands. It is necessary to mark two branches of the investigation task from the whole restructutization work: the creation of new study programs and the development of study programs content. The change of the number of study programs and the distribution of study programs according the study fields and branches are shown in Fig 2 and Table. The content of study programs determinates different factors: conception of university education, market demands, qualification of teaching staff, documents which regulate higher education system, etc. VGTU reached the balance in study programs between fundamental science subjects and specialty subjects. The understanding of market demands incorporates economics, management, computing and foreign languages of enough volume in programs. Quality assurance is the most important subject matter in a study program development and improvement procedure. In the article quality criteria for studies are given and the importance of practice in education and especially in engineering education is especially emphasized.