engleski

Adapting Higher Education to Trends on Labour Market

In an globalized and increasingly knowledge-based economy, education and training become crucial for both economic progress and social well-being. This notion is recognized and addressed throughout Europe 2020 strategy, especially in its section entitled Education and Training (ET 2020). In this strategic framework at EU-level, the objectives, instruments and arrangements are set to promote and boost knowledge creation and innovation as an unquestionable precondition for achieving productivity, quality and sustainability. However, recent evidence suggests growing mismatch between the skills people acquire and what is demanded on the labour market. These indicate the need for better alignment of skills with labour market needs. Formal education systems are often slow and inflexible enough to adapt to dynamic market needs. Solutions can be found in extracurricular programs set to boost specific skills, life-long learning programs, internships, and similar activities and programs aimed at lowering the gap between labour market needs and competencies labour force offers. In this exploratory research, we aim to investigate how internships and similar activities contribute to decreasing the gap between graduates from tertiary education and employers’ expectations. The results show that integration of various forms of activities, leading to improve or upgrade graduates` practical competencies (i.e. internships), are creating the bridge between deficiency of slow changing study curricula and constantly changing market trends, thus contributing to the alignment of workforce skills and labour market needs.

higher education, labour market, internship, extracurricular activities, LLL

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