What qualifications and competence of graduates of higher education institutions are needed ? Interviews with employers of Masovia

Abstract

In the article a presentation of the qualifications and competence that graduates of higher education institutions possess and which are expected by employers of Masovia. For that purpose the results of the quality survey were used, precisely 45 deepened individual interviews (IDI) with the heads and owners of companies (small, average and big) in the region. In the course of the survey identified and described were mechanisms and procedures applied in companies in order to assess the degree of adaptation of the qualifications and competence with which graduates are equipped by the college to the ones expected by the market, as well as the process of recruitment and the system of evaluations and verification of the qualifications, and action taken by employers in case of discrepancies between requirements of the job and competence of the employee. It turned out, that selection criteria adopted by employers, i.e. legal form, size of the company and area of its activity, are evidently diversifying recruitment procedures applied by them (recruitment, evaluation and verification of qualifications, training, adaptive). In the article these differences were also shown. Since the issue causing many emotions and discussion is the adaptation, or rather the maladjustment of the directional structure of higher education to the needs of the labor market and since there is a lack of information about these needs, it was also attempted to find a reply to the question put in the title of article.