Responsiveness Of Higher Education To Changing Job Market Requirements In Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan economy has been shifting to the market-based economy from the centrally governed economy since 1991.The new economy has its own labor market requirements.Besides,in todays’world technological advancements’ impact on employment requirements cannot be denied.This research aims to examine higher education responsiveness in preparing graduates to meet the demands of the current job market trends.The study measured the higher education-labor market interaction in two stages.Firstly,by examining the private job market requirements through the vacancy announcement website and by examining the university admission statistics through the secondary data analysis.This stage helped the researcher to come to conclusion if there is enough admission to the study fields which are most demanded by the industry.After getting an overview of the labor market requirements and higher education statistics,the researcher,examined the responsiveness of higher education to employment from employees perspectives.This study employed a mixed method research.Research tools were a content analysis and a survey with close-ended and open-ended questions.Since this research aimed to investigate higher education as an investment for better employment opportunities,the researcher believed that Human Capital Theory(Becker,1964)would better guide this study.The contribution of this study to the literature is at twofold.First is to examine demands of the job market in contrast with developed and transition economies and second to see how responsive are university programs to prepare graduates compatible for the changing job market.Our study is the first to examine how the match between job requirements and employees’ skills has developed over time according to employees perspectives.The study revealed that,most demanded jobs are the ones that related to business,economics and information technologies.Nevertheless public higher education offered less free of charge study programs for the mentioned fields.The research also revealed that there is a common education-employment mismatch among the higher education graduates.The mismatch shows itself in two forms,first,the study field of the employee is relevant to the job requirements,but the content of the study has not been quite responsive to labor market demands.Secondly,employees’ degree field is not relevant to their current job occupations.Evidences show that many graduates are employed in the jobs that did not require higher education.This is a clear incidence of over-eduaction among the employees.Internship which is meant to be a practical experience to prepare students for the job market is not able to reach its aim and non-cognitive skills which were requirements of almost all job openings in 2019 and 2020 are not sufficiently acquired in higher education institutions.