Position of Higher Education System Graduates in the Labor Market: Search For New Opportunities

Abstract

The ongoing socio-economic and socio-cultural changes bring about significant alterations in the social structure of society and the institution of education. This calls for in-depth research to predict the further development of social processes and determine effective methods of managing them at the society and regional levels. The employment of university graduates has essentially acquired the characteristics of a new social process after the abolition of obligatory employment by distribution. The emergence of new statuses (for example, mixed statuses), in which university graduates often find themselves being unemployed or working outside their professions, has become an acknowledged social fact. The interest of many sociologists in this problem is also due to changes in the functions of social institutions, including the institution of education, an important part of which is higher education. The study focuses on the importance of such obstacles as contradictions between the qualification programs, teaching methods, graduates’ competencies, employers’ requirements for the same competencies and qualifications, the mismatch between the studied theory and practice, and the identification and justification of the main employment strategies for university graduates. The study objectives are pursued through descriptive data analysis and the qualitative approach with a questionnaire as the main data collection method. The study is conducted on a sample of 130 organization leaders. The aforementioned problems and shortcomings of Kazakh university graduates’ training are detected and analyzed using comparative analysis. In accordance with the specifics of the labor market, the authors identify the market, paternalistic, and traditional strategies of university graduates’ employment.
 
 Received: 21 December 2021 / Accepted: 16 March 2022 / Published: 5 May 2022

Conceptual platform and applied aspects of interaction between government and business agencies in the Republic of Kazakhstan

“…The state is faced with apparent inconsistencies in the quantity and quality of training of labor resources. The joint efforts of business and the state education system should eliminate such imbalances between supply and demand in the labor market (Syzdykova et al, 2022). The business sector and the state should become active participants in implementing the State Youth Policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan until 2020.…”

Opportunities to Increase the Efficiency of Universities’ Research and Innovation Activities: Scientometric Evaluation of Researchers' Work under External Information Constraints

“…In this study, we proceeded from the assumption that the management and faculty of a modern university are in a constant search of ways to increase the efficiency of their current work [29] and of new directions in the use of assets [30] to create such value for the consumers of educational and scientific services [31] that would allow them to obtain monetary and other resources in exchange [32,33].…”

State Regulation of Digital Technologies for Sustainable Development and Territorial Planning

“…Scientific and educational support is significant for the sustainable development of territorial communities [46]. The state can contribute to the process by focusing on fundamental and applied research, ordering scientific research in relevant areas, implementing curricula, and training specialists with the competencies necessary to ensure the functioning of smart territories.…”

“…The main functions of this mechanism in the formation of economic growth rates are as follows [45]: improving the quality of solving acute social problems (including issues of the labor market, vertical social mobility of the population, social adaptation of young people, etc. ); developing the social services market and knowledge networks, including the diversification and optimization of access to it; increasing the contribution of education and science to the modernization of the economy by creating a system of continuous education, updating the content and optimizing the structure of vocational education, and meeting the economic demand in qualified specialists and workers [46]; conducting applied scientific research on elements and integral territorial systems of innovative management (territorial clusters).…”