What shall we do to bridge the gaps between HEIs and employers to foster development of regions? Graduates and cooperation with HEIs - employers' perspectives
Abstract
Employers are searching for graduates with competences which are necessary for success in the market. Further they are willing to cooperate with HEIs and to enhance the already existing cooperation.
There seems to be great potential of improvement of HEIs - businesses cooperation, however, there are also resistant barriers that need to be overcome. (Šmídová 2009; Davey, Meerman, Muros, Orazbayeva, Baaken 2018; Pinheiro, Young, Sima 2018) The objective of this paper is identification and analysis of employers' views on graduates' competences and, further, of their attitudes to possible as well as already existing cooperation with HEIs. That with the further aim to find effective public policy mixes fostering the HEIs - business cooperation leading to development of regions.
The paper is based on mixed methodology. The first part of the analysis will be based on the quantitative data from the Graduate 2018 survey.
In this survey, graduates from bachelor, master and doctoral study programmes of Czech HEIs in the period between 2013-2017 were the main target group, but employers of these graduates were also surveyed. The employers were specifically asked about their expectations of graduates' competences in contrast with the real competences of the graduates they employed.
The analysis, for now, has shown that one of the major problems is gap between theoretical knowledge and practical skills of the graduates and insufficient practical training/experience. This will be followed with analysis of qualitative survey of 16 employers from three regions of the Czech Republic: Vysocina, Liberec and Zlin regions.
The 16 semi-structured interviews were conducted mostly with HR managers with direct experience with graduates with the main goal to learn about the experience of the employers in two fields: 1. experience with the graduates, 2. experience with cooperation (of all kinds) with HEI or HEIs. In conceptual terms, the research will be underpinned by insights about policy instruments, policy instrument mixes and public policy design (Elmore 1987; Howlett, Rayner 2007 and 2008; Schneider, Ingram, 1990) to identify persistent as well as less obvious gaps and barriers preventing effective cooperation of HEIs and employers.
The research findings are expected to conduce to fill the gaps in still underdeveloped area of external stakeholder involvement in HE study programme designs in CR, with implications for the CEE regions and beyond.