Entry problems of higher educational institutions graduates to the labor market: ambitions, reality, perspective

Abstract

institutions students about their future entry into the labor market. This applies to obtained competencies, value orientations, one’s own abilities and capabilities, ideas about the most prestigious and promising professions, as well as the state of the labor market and its changes coming soon. Purpose: correlation analysis of plans, preferences, desires, or image of their own successful professional future of higher educational institutions young people to the real state of the labor market at the present time and soon. Research design: it is based on a series of university students questionnaire surveys in several cities in 2017, 2019 and 2020 years, the following are analyzed: motives for choosing a future job, ideas about the importance of mastering a university program for success in the professional future, preferences for the type or area of the work and the choice between independence and the position of an employee, prestigious and promising specialties, as well as the state of the labor market, its problems that university graduates have to overcome when they first encounter with the modern system of employment. Results: the research showed that an inadequate assessment of university students mastering universal and professional competencies the importance, relying on their own abilities and opportunities as a source of future professional success, absence of self-determination among university youth regarding their work in the future, misconceptions, and ignorance of the state of the labor market give rise to great difficulties for graduate’s universities when they first enter the labor market. Along with other reasons (which there are many), an important role here is played by a significant drop in the quality of education and the rejection on its educational function. Russian education needs a serious transformation, which implies, in addition to increasing the level of mastering competencies, a social orientation in working with young people, which will make it possible to educate a conscious professional creator and citizen instead of an infantile hedonist consumer. Without such changes, Russian education will finally cease to fulfill its main function – the preparation of highly qualified specialists for knowledge-intensive sectors of the economy.