The cohesion and competitiveness of the European Union in the area of the tertiary education: the qualification - the innovation – the employment

Abstract

The high youth unemployment rate is becoming a serious problem of the European Union as the population keeps aging. At the same time, an increasing demand occurs for employees with higher qualifications ensuring a certain level of the key competencies to university graduates from the side of employers - commercial or non-commercial sector employers. The young generation, entering the labour market with a low degree of education, faces the greatest unemployment risk. What thus becomes essential for the primary as well as secondary education is to enhance the decreasing authority of school in continuity with the search for new innovative ways leading to increasing motivation for the process of education. It is more than obvious that the high-quality workforce, capable of participating in the production of the top and innovative goods and services, means success in the current competitive environment of the world market. And then it is especially the tertiary education that becomes the fundamental source of the workforce for research, development, and innovations. University graduates thus have to be able to positively present the essential knowledge and skills necessary for their implementation in the practice, which means a turn in the ever-persisting and current trend of a decreasing level of their practical readiness. The tertiary education then - with the growing preference of fields and study programs in continuity with the narrow link to the economic needs of the society as a response to the existing need s of the labour market - represents not only one of the primary topics of the Strategic Framework - Education & Training, as well as of the Cohesion Policy 2014-2020. The study presents the key data on the tertiary education in the European Union, the specifics of the education sector in the Czech Republic with the possibilities for university graduates employability within the labour market in relation to the regional development. The study is based on both the analysis (comparison) of the secondary data mapping the tertiary education with possibilities for the youth employability in the labour market within the European Union with the preference of the Czech Republic; and, due to the observed topic, the attention is also focused on the resulting values of the quantitative surveys presenting - the perception of the authority of school among the adolescent generation with the links to the possibilities for innovative solutions consequently reflecting in the tertiary education and training. All of this happening in continuity with the resulting values of the set needs of non-governmental organizations of the Zlin Region within the collaboration with Tomas Bata University, and at the same time with the reflection of the perception of the contemporary collaboration (and the subsequent professional orientation) with students of the Faculty of Multimedia Communications.