University posgraduate programmes in Public Health. Curriculum Decisions and effective education in Diploma, Specialization and Master Programmes in Public Health in Argentinian Higher Education

Abstract

This paper is a synthesis of the thesis developed into the Master Programme in Public Administration at the Buenos Aires University about university postgraduate programmes in Public Health, that was presented schematically last year into the Convention of Public Health School at the Cordoba National University. That work treats all aspects of different instances of curriculum decision making on university postgraduate programmes in Public Health, in the context of health sector and higher education transformations from the eighties and nineties decades in Argentina.

The incidence of these transformations in the design and development of curriculum for the programmes is described and analyzed in order to understanding the effective education of the students and the profile and competences for the performance of profession of graduates.

The general characteristics of the educational institutions in which the programmes were dictated have been relieved as well as their objectives, bases and creation year, curriculum structure -hourly load and curricular activities-, teaching methodologies and modalities of monitoring, academic and professional formation of teaching staff and chiefs and degree studies of the students, as well as their previous and subsequent labor insertion after the postgrade studies, inside a labor field in deep transformation.

In preliminary form it can be identified the following tendencies:

- From the education for intervention in health services environment and politics to aid and prevention, to the education for the individual professional performance in the field of Management;

- From the conditions and needs of Health, to the market demands as determinant of the offering in education for the professional field; and - From the diplomas or professional specialities, to the academic masters