Abstract:

In the market of educational services due to its globalization and diversity, huge changes are taking place: internationalization, digitalization, building an individual trajectory. More and more attention is paid to new educational technologies, which allow to expand the acquired competences, to develope soft skills. For some specialties and destinations such a task is of paramount importance, for example, the direction "tourism".

In the Russian Federation higher education in tourism, as a rule, is structurally included into one of three faculties: economic, geographical, historical. The specifics of the faculty leave an imprint, including the general professional competences, which the graduates possess.

To analyze the required competencies of graduates for the tourism industry in Russia, URFU conducted a sociological survey that combined quantitative and qualitative strategy. First of all, a survey was conducted among graduates of the specialty "Tourism" in 2006-2016 on satisfaction with their education and its correlation with the requirements of the real situation on the labor market. Secondly, 9 interviews were collected with representatives of both the authorities - the Foreign Economic Cooperation Division of the Department of International Relations of the Ministry of International and Foreign Economic Relations of the Sverdlovsk Oblast.

Practitioners each noted the need to increase the hours and opportunities for gaining practical skills. The idea of modeling a situation as close to reality as possible to the educational process can be solved in different ways. The first variant of the solution is to invite practitioners with the analysis of case studies.
The second variant of the solution: it is within the framework of the project or production practice to reach out to employers. For example, the Sigma project was implemented in Ural Federal University in 2012-2014. The project was based on the hotels in Ekaterinburg, 2nd and 3rd year students were to have at least 1 practical training day per week during the academic semester. The project faced many challenges in its implementation: documenting the work of the students, drawing up a list of responsibilities, appointing curators from the immediate area, who had to fully monitor and be responsible for the actions of the student.

The third variant of the decision: creation of conditions in higher education institution imitating a real working case. In 2017, a business plan for a training café at the University was developed. The main task, in addition to providing catering services, is training, development of theoretical skills in practice. The project envisages allocation of a canteen on the basis of the educational café, where students will sell a small range of finished products.

In general, thanks to the conducted research, the contradictions that a graduate faces on the labor market have been revealed: on the one hand, there is quite a large volume of competencies that an employer expects from graduates of the "tourism" direction. On the other hand, the alumni's dissatisfaction with the strategies of gaining practical experience presented in the educational process. On the case of UFU three strategies for solving the problem were considered: invitation of practitioners to conduct classes, organization of networking during the period of industrial practice. And it is proposed to implement the third solution - a training cafe on the basis of the university.

Keywords:

Tourism industry, competencies of graduates, training cafe, market of educational services, labor market.