Occupational health and safety post graduation courses in Europe : a general overview

Abstract

The education of safety professionals shows a high variety in their level of approved qualifications, ranging from a technician level up to university master courses, and more recently, doctoral programs. In European countries, it seems that there are some differences in what regards the characteristics of the courses. These may be due to national particularities and legal issues, but also to the nature of the institutions and people ‘behind’ the courses. This paper presents the results of a survey carried out in the scope of an European research project and it aims to provide a basic understanding of the range and diversity of the OHS post-graduation courses. With an estimated average answer rate of 50%, the survey has only included courses with more than 120 teaching hours, from a post-graduation level, and with complete programs. Results are presented for 90 courses, from 18 countries, mainly (84.4%) from universities. It is possible to highlight the fact that, as expected, the majority of the courses (59%) are Masters (or equivalent), and are organised primarily by Engineering, Applied Sciences and Management schools/faculties, which together accounted for nearly 65% of the courses. In what regards the adopted quality systems reported by respondents, there is a predominance (65.8%) of the use of ‘‘internal’’ tools, such as the students and teachers evaluations and internal audits. One of the main conclusions is that there is a large variability amongst the analysed courses. However, it should be emphasised that these results are not representative of the situation all around Europe, as it was not possible to obtain information from all OHS courses. Considering the identified differences within all the European countries, the harmonisation of post-graduation courses on OHS, if it is to occur, has a long way to go.