There are many students who finish degrees at university, but few move into the workplace after they graduate. Why is this? What measures can be taken to encourage them into work?

There are many students who finish degrees at university, but few move into the workplace after they graduate. Why is this? What measures can be taken to encourage them into work? Many Kazakhstani university graduates do not apply for a job in their field of study. According to the data by the “Atameken” NCE at the end of 2018, about 60% of university graduates could not obtain a job in their specialty. In addition, NCE stated that employers are often dissatisfied with the university vocational training quality. Further to this conducted study of educational programs indicated that nearly 35% of graduates do not work in their specialty, and 40% were unable to find a job within a year after graduation. This implies the knowledge, skills, and experience gained in university for most graduates serve insufficient to partake in the job market. Experts associate this tendency with university entrants' inconsiderate professional choice and low-quality university training. Thus, upon graduation, students are faced with reluctance to work or huge competition and go to work in areas far from fields to which they have devoted at least four years of study. Professor, political scientist of ENU E. Nechaeva stated further that the thoughtless major choice generates student’s disappointment already while studying at the university. Besides, this leads to the fact that students radically change their plans: learners transfer to study in other specialties or drop out of the university. A. Tleubaeva, an IT professor at KazUTB stated that about 5-10% of students change their specialty and sometimes even the university already in their first year of study. Moreover, experts believe that universities do not prepare graduates for the labour market conditions and that educational programs are outdated. According to the NCE experts, in domestic universities, students receive knowledge that is not needed in production and many regional universities disregard the staffing needs of their region. Given that it can be seen that the labour market is divorced from the higher education system. The key measures to be taken to increase the employment of graduates are to improve school carrier orientation guidance and to refine the higher education quality. NCE "Atameken" proposes to revoke the licenses of universities with a low rate of employment and recommends that universities create career centres for the successful placement of students after graduation. In its turn, the MES of the RK is gradually improving the quality of higher education by updating educational programs, conducting accreditation of universities, and participating in international processes such as the Bologna process. Another measure that can be taken in this direction is to conduct quality vocational guidance work in schools. In this way, school graduates will be able to choose a profession according to their skills, their area of interest, and the demands and conditions of the labour market. According to Professor E. Nechaeva, this will allow entrants to consider whether they will be able to adapt and obtain the necessary training and whether they comprehend what specifically they will do in their profession. Few university students work in their field after graduation. Research in this area has shown that about half of graduate students do not work in their profession. The wrong choice of a specialty, insufficient quality of education, as well as the gap between the labour market demands and university training causes this problem. Recently, some measures have been undertaken to solve this issue. The relevant ministries and organizations work in this direction: they develop programs to improve the quality of education, to update educational programs, to improve school vocational guidance, and also to create favourable conditions for employment of graduates. Therefore, further effective work in this direction can bring results and increase the employment of graduates in the professions for which they are trained.