ADDRESSING CHALLENGES OF THE DECREASE OF STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITIES BY ENABLING SECONDARY STUDENTS’ TO BE A UNIVERSITY STUDENT FOR A TRY

Demographic changes in the society together with the official state educational policy in the Czech Republic have resulted the current situation of sharp decrease in students applying to universities. This paper deals with the area how to address the above-introduced issue. The initial part describes the current situation in the Czech Republic concerning demographic changes, primarily in the number of students at secondary schools, which is the main factor influencing the future number of students applying to universities. Next part describes the Czech national educational policy, which is a secondary factor influencing the same. The main part of this paper presents a project which is solved at the University of Ostrava, Department of Informatics and Computers (entitled “University student on trial basis”). Although the area of Information technologies is very favourite among students, also this field of studies suffers the mentioned drop in the number of students. Thus, our department has decided to attract talented students from secondary schools that are located in the region of our university. The paper will describe the way of organising the project, its contents and objectives as well as results that are quite prospective for our department. In the conclusion we would like to draw attention of the interested to this kind of making secondary school students interested the life and studies at a university.