Massification of tertiary education and the change in the position of graduates on the labor market in the Visegrad countries
Abstract
The Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Poland and Hungary are not only countries with a long-standing interdependent history, but also countries where there have been similar dynamic changes in higher education over the past 30 years. Before 1989 the tertiary education sector in the Visegrad Group countries was, in general, exclusive and dominated by a system of traditional and technical universities.
The transition to capitalism provided a window of opportunity for change in education systems. Although the forms of reforms were not the same and did not occur at the same time, we can see similar dynamics of development for the Visegrad Group countries.
At least in terms of enrolment, all of them have witnessed educational expansion at the tertiary level, which at times has grown at a speed hardly observed in Western societies. The study maps the massification of tertiary education in the Visegrad Group countries and shows how in the context of these developments has the situation of tertiary graduates in the labour market changed.
It uses three indicators of measurement - unemployment rate, vertical job mismatch and horizontal job mismatch. The results show that in case of all indicators, it is Poland and Slovakia, which is significantly worse in comparison.
In Poland, the cause seems to be quite evident in the exorbitant massification of higher education and in the lack of differentiation, with the vast majority of graduates still graduating from Master's degree programs. More difficult to explain is the poor situation of higher education graduates in Slovakia, where such massive growth has not occurred.
Conversely, in the Czech Republic and Hungary, the transformation of tertiary education seems to have taken place with much less negative consequences.