Usługi edukacyjne na poziomie akademickim w kontekście wymagań rynku pracy

The transformation of the political system in Poland brought, apart from obvious profits, a number of negative consequences. One of the crucial socio-economic problems is unemployment, which also affects the graduates of higher education. One of the most important reasons for this unfavourable situation is traditional concept of academic education, not always correlating with the needs of employers. Previous curricula  strategies resulted in some majors being perceived as a pass to low paid occupations or unemployment. According to many scholars, thinking about academic education mainly as the step for being employed after graduation is oversimplifying the role of higher education. This outlook does not take into consideration very dynamic changes in services (also educational services on an academic level) in socio-economic development and the fact that one of the  principal purposes of modern higher education is to produce graduates who are able to succeed in the workplace and who can make worthwhile contributions to organisations where they are employed. Such aspirations are common for candidates for students who estimate the probability of finding a good job after graduation. The experiences of the West European countries in this area show that in few years it will be very important to design such curricula which provide education as close to employers’ expectations of the graduates as possible. The paper presents the results of the literature studies concerning modern concepts of higher education in reference to the needs of the labour market.