European experience of skills anticipation: lessons for Ukraine - Статья

European experience of skills anticipation: lessons for Ukraine L. Lisogor D-r of Economics, Prof. Head of the Department Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine Formulation of the problem. Economic globalization leads to the strengthening of the national economy’s interdependence as a result of the intensification of cross-border trade in goods and services, acceleration of international capital flows, implementation of advanced technologies. It stipulates the necessity of the efficient use of human resources, improving the quality of human capital as a vital component of the national competitiveness growth. Accordingly, countries face challenges to ensure matching the labour supply appeared from existing educational systems with the changing skills demand from employer’s side. Main problems of skills matching in market oriented and developing countries are that the system cannot adequately tackle the existence of large-scale informal economy, a large gap between education system and employer’s needs, a low level of cooperation in adjusting education curricular and updating current education standards and curricula to the labour market needs. A more efficient way of estimating the volume and structure of future skills needs would be by estimating a skills mismatch caused not only structural changes, but also the influence of demographic factors. However, if there are a high birth rates, school graduates will not have to find a decent job (excess labour supply); while in countries with ageing population the workforce shortage has been observed. At the same time countries with high rates of qualified labour force emigration are characterized by labour shortage because incentives for international migration are differences in wages. In general, the above problems would indicate a need for research on the challenges and prospects of skills anticipation development in Ukraine based on foreign experience. Analysis of recent research and publications. Despite the existence of studies of foreign and Ukrainian scientists devoted to the analysis of methodological approaches to anticipation of economy’s needs in skilled labour more detailed investigation of such problems remains a daunting challenge. In particular, among the known foreign scientists who studied the problems of skills anticipation Rob Wilson, Alena Zukersteinova, Olga Strietska-Ilina, Ben Kriechel, Lorenz Lassnigg, and others should be noted. According to Alena Zukersteinova, Olga Strietska-Ilina, foresight of demand for skills should take into account the supply and demand not only in economics but also in education system development [1]. Lorenz Lassnigg noted that in order to improve the relation between supply and demand in education and training, or between the education market and the labour market, it is necessary to account for three basic elements of foresight: time horizons, consolidated knowledge and information, and arrangements for making more or less deliberate choices and assumptions [2, p. 13]. Using very different approaches, Ukrainian scientists Victoria Blyznyuk, Galyna Kupalova, Vasyl Savchenko, Yuriy Kharazishvili, Olexander Tsymbal reached the conclusion about the necessity of the development and implementation of the methodology of skills anticipation in Ukraine. In particular, Y. Harazishvili noted that Ukraine «... in predicting social and economic processes are used above all econometric models based on correlation and regression analysis. It involves the use of forecasting methods describing a future that actually is a continuation or extrapolation of the past. But this essentially limits the accuracy and functionality of such methods» [3]. Especially it concerns the use of these approaches in anticipation processes occurring on the labour market. However, the problem of the development of anticipating and matching skills demand and supply (by level of education, occupation and economic activity in Ukraine (based on the European experience)) has not been sufficiently studied, confirming the expediency of further investigation of these problems.