Annual Pennsylvania Conference on Postsecondary Occupational Education: Programming Postsecondary Occupational Education. (Ninth, Pennsylvania State University, September 28-29, 1977).

Overview & Synopsis

This publication contains the text of the main presentations and the highlights of discussion groups from the Ninth Annual Pennsylvania Conference on Postsecondary Occupational Education. The conference theme was "Programming Postsecondary Occupational Education." Ewald Nyquist, the first speaker, delineated the problems faced by postsecondary education--money shortages, declining enrollments, and competition between institutions--and suggested that a partial solution lay in regional cooperation. In her report on current educational research, Eileen Kuhns summarized projects investigating job crisis, vocational vs. liberal education, affective preparation for work, accountability, education's new consumers and new producers, and programming coordination. The executive vice-president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, Robert Mahoney, stressed that educators, workers, and employers all have a stake in program planning and must begin to cooperate. Carl Herr related plans for postsecondary occupational education to the state plan for vocational education. In Edwin Herr's talk on counselling postsecondary vocational students, the diversity of students in vocational education and areas of counselling needs were recognized, methods for career education were suggested, and policy implications were outlined for these approaches. Lee Frederick addressed the topic of cooperative education and emphasized that cooperative education is a legitimate form of academic education, not merely a learning experience. An overview of the conference was provided by James Murphy. (ELG)