Abstract:

The relationship between educational institutions and business has always being provoking a bunch of questions as “which is the best approach for universities to provide education in correspondence to the market needs?”, “are employers aware of their real future needs from specialists when they pose requirements to the curricula and programs?”, “are employers motivated to participate in the process of education and development of required skills and knowledge during study?”, “which is the best way for two sides of this partnership to communicate in order to provide well qualified, employable and competitive specialists with higher education on the labour market, who are in correspondence to recent needs and employer’s requirements?” The following paper presents the results of survey aiming to identify opinions of employers towards different forms of cooperation with university for employability encouragement of graduating students. The answers of 77 industrial companies, defined as key employers, operating on the territory of 4 districts (NUTS 3 level) in Bulgaria are analysed for evaluation of industry attitudes for cooperation with universities, based on 4 criteria – importance, application, interest for participation and awareness of the forms. Results from correlation analysis of employers’ answers and regression model shows that the variable interest of industrial companies in participation in cooperation with university for encouragement of graduating students’ employability depends on variables importance, application and awareness of the forms.

Keywords:

University-industry cooperation, employability, university to work transition, industry attitudes for cooperation, forms of cooperation, regression model.