European Qualifications Framework and the comparison of academically-oriented and professionally-oriented master's degrees

Abstract

Abstract With the moderating power of the European Qualification Framework (EQF), European higher education has, for some time, been moving in a competence-oriented direction in some educational systems. The EQF is a competence framework that defines standards to all levels of qualification. The framework is set up to facilitate comparison of qualifications and qualifications' levels between and within different national educational systems. In this article, we are using the EQF to set the standards for the comparison between different higher education qualifications. The purpose is to reflect upon the differences of graduates with academically-oriented and professionally-oriented Master's degrees. We approach this problem by asking employers (survey, n=134) and graduates (interviews, n=30) for their opinion of how well the competence of academic and professional Master's degrees fit the objectives of the EQF level 7. Moreover, we are interested to explore how well the EQF lends itself to this kind of a comparison. The particular context for this study is the Finnish dual system of higher education. Keywords: competencehigher educationMaster's degreesEuropean Qualification Framework (EQF) Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education. We would like to thank Pertti Vuorinen, Laurea University of Applied Sciences, for his support in statistical analysis. Notes 1. The number of graduates with professional Master's degree is much smaller that the number of graduates with academic Master's degrees. At the time the survey was conducted, there had been only 1500 graduates with professional Master's thesis in total, compared with over 10,000 graduates with academic Master's degrees per year (https://kotayksi.csc.fi/).