Regional sustainable development through enhancing the regional graduates employability; case of Georgia

Abstract

Education, in general, creates strong basics of sustainable development. Higher education is one of the important settings for accomplishing better education and quality of human life. Region based higher educational institutions (HEIs) have high input in regional economic development through traditional functions of teaching and research. Educational institutions acquiring graduates with relevant knowledge and skills for the labour market. The given paper examines: How Georgian regional universities enhance the graduates’ employability and workforce formation? Do the institutions encouraging university-business interactions? What are the main challenges and optimal ways of improvement? The article is using a qualitative research method with a combination of mixed research techniques by collecting and analysing other qualitative and quantitative information from national governmental reports, scientific articles, and annual statistical data. The paper draws the background information, that enhances the bed climate for recent graduates on the labour market, the unemployment and employment rate, proportion of horizontal mismatch, fields or groups of studies that students are most likely to be mismatched, its cause and effects relationship. Results show that institutions have week interaction with regional enterprises and SMEs: HEIs do not have skills anticipation strategy based on the regional business sector to avoid potential misbalance in the labour market. HEIs instead of showing initiative often take a proactive position and are looking at interactions between labour market stakeholders; they have weak interaction with public and private enterprises. Regional SMEs’ participation in creating curriculums is uncommon.