Global Efforts in Education and Knowledge Transfer in the Field of Biotechnology

F.V. Nekrep

Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Zootechnical Department Groblje 3, 51-61230 Domžale, Slovenia

Article history:
Received June 15, 1994
Accepted September 26, 1994

Summary:
Education for biotechnology became a distinctive necessity when this field joined other new technologies with tenders for new products and new markets. Formally qualified manpower as an important guaranty of skill attracted new capital resources into various segments of biotechnology development. The conservatism as inseparable but disturbing trait of public education systems hindered the transformation of vocational profiles, needed by new technologies. Biotechnologies arc usually not new industries or productions, but enter different parts of the existing technologies, so their adjustment enables a soft passage also in education and training. Internationally, we can find various educational models, from formally stiff and closed to modular and open ones, from solutions starting already at the undergraduate level to the schemes building on postgraduate curricula.