Regional Market of Education Services: Development Problems

Abstract

Economy of the Altay territory is a diversified complex, where key types of economic activity are manufacturing industry, agriculture, wholesale and retail trade. A specific feather of the territory is a high proportion of the rural population – 39.3% of the total number of employed people (23% in Russia) and a low number of students of primary, secondary vocational and higher education as compared with all – Russian figures. According to the strategy of social and economic development of the Altay territory up to 2025 the priority lines in the territory economy are bio-technology, pharmaceutics, certain branches of machine building and food industry, tourismrecreation and transportation complexes, high-profit services of the service sector, including finance services, as well as services in the field of high technologies. The level of training specialists and skilled workers for this diversified labour market in general is sufficient, training is conducted by more than 200 specializations in all priority lines however, the training in the vocational education system fell down by 20% during the last 5 years. The demographic situation in the territory seriously influenced these figures. Changes in the structure of the GRP of the Altay territory caused the reduction in the proportion of manufacturing industry and agriculture, which affected negatively the level of population employment in production industries. The authors studied the key trends of the system of vocational education development in the territory in 2012–2016 and showed that the misbalance of education service supply with the real need in them on the labour market was caused both by the absence of reliable methods of labour market forecasting by quantity and structure and the impact of population preferences assessing subjectively the demand for labour resources proceeding from personal ideas about the demand for this or that profession. It can lead to the excess number of specialists of ‘popular’ professions and difficulties with their employment and, on the other hand – to the shortage of needed professional staff.

Keywords

• education service market
• labour market
• labour market forecasting
• system of vocational education
• types of economic activity
• the number and structure of population employed in economy
• methodology and methods of forecast