Education Standards and Competence-oriented Curricula - The Austrian Technical Colleges Take a New Approach to Excellence

In Austria, Technical Colleges are those educational institutions that train and educate the skilled technical staff required by the Austrian labour market and the universities. These colleges have contributed a lot to Austria’s economic success and every year about 8,000 young engineers leave the technical schools to form a powerful work and study force. Therefore, it is particularly important that the education they receive meets the requirements of prospective employers and that innovative developments are anticipated. As a consequence, the Austrian Technical Colleges have developed curricula that rely on learning outcomes and competence-based results. This new orientation towards skills, knowledge and competences shall be achieved through learning objectives that precisely describe the education chosen. How these standards have been designed, matched with the curricula, and implemented at the Colleges will be described in this paper.