J08 - Labor Economics PoliciesReturn

The situation in the labour markets in EU countries after the onset of the financial and economic crisis has deteriorated significantly, while so called vulnerable groups have been affected more. Since the late 90s EU countries are oriented to promote employment growth, which is reflected in the documents and guidelines for individual Member States and approaches to find common solutions in the field of labour market and employment policy. For this purpose Europe 2020 strategy and follow-up documents and recommendations focused on growth performance, employment and competitiveness of the EU countries were adopted. The paper is focused on the characteristics of basic trends in the labour markets in the Member States, challenges and common procedures for employment growth and job creation.

The team of this study authors analyses the relations between the work and education from the middle of the 20th century (the 50s) and try to find out (define) wether or to which extent the market requirements are an important criterium of the higher school quality. It is a depth probe into the development of these relations and as a result it identifies 3 periods of these relations: (1) reduction of the social inequality among the higher schools students(till the end of the 60s); (2) fundamentals discords between work (employees) and education going through (during the 70s-80s); (3) establishing the market priorities: the education takes over the responsibility for training skills for the work (90s - till today).
It compares research done in this field (Porrer, University Edinburgh) with the current descriptors of the European Qualification Framework (EQF). The study authors prove that the traditional evaluation of the higher school study, based on scientific contents, make way to the work skills as a main quality criterium of education.