The project aims to involve the graduates of one of the leading Russian universities - Ural Federal University - in (1) assessing the impact of students' trajectories (their characteristics and results) on their subsequent results in the labour market, (2) identifying the key tools for creating a favourable environment for mutual cooperation between the university and its graduates, (3) enhancing the university reputation for target audiences (prospective students, their parents, employers) through publicly presenting the research results demonstrating the graduates’ success in the labour market.
The project contributes to the development of systemic practices in institutional research, including (1) the problems of graduates' satisfaction with university education, (2) the content of educational programmes (knowledge and skills gained that will strengthen future career), (3) the opportunities for developing professional and career trajectories after graduation (6 months after graduation and entering the labour market). Consequently, the research results will contribute to increasing the university graduates’ adaptability to the labour market needs and the rapidly changing professional requirements.
The project is relevant since it offers a possibility for calculating options and scenarios for student learning on the available educational trajectories taking into account the regional labour market demand for professionals who completed popular university degree courses (educational programmes).
The novelty of the project is that it plans to use a two-level model (for assessing the university graduates’ quantitative and qualitative characteristics) containing the elements of agent-oriented models and search-and-matching model, which makes it possible to set different model scenarios at the first level by means of agent-based modeling and to transfer the information obtained about the possible states of the system under study to the second level. At the second level, the modified search-and-matching model allows us to calculate the indicators describing the labour market satisfaction with the university graduates’ quantitative and qualitative characteristics in order to subsequently adjust the university educational programmes and the students’ educational trajectories.