No. 4

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Education and Work

19 December 2001

Studies

RiTo No. 4, 2001

There is a considerable gap between the output of the Estonian educational system and the demand for education from the labour market.

Arising from the structure of our economy, the highest demand is for skilled workers, medium-level specialists and simple labourers with contemporary work culture. Our present educational system (and the society as a whole) produces far too many outcasts without basic education and with low sense of duty, who would probably not meet the requirements of the labour market. What we need is, in the first place, the development of a network of strong higher vocational educational institutions that would continue the good traditions of the former technical schools.

On the other hand, there is threat of overqualification among the labour force because of the excessively expanded and at points low-quality higher educational system, which is unnecessarily expensive, both to the state and to the students (studying at private universities) and creates deceitful illusions with the latter. For preservation and improvement of the strategic competitiveness of the state the number of students of the fields of science and engineering should be substantially increased alongside with binding this with the developing high-technology-based production and servicing.

Full article in Estonian

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