University-business cooperation: adapting the curriculum and educational package to labor market requirements

Abstract

The paper explores the current state of the university-business cooperation at EU, and national level, and it seems that a more structured university-business cooperation might enable universities to adapt their curricula to meet labor market requirements better. A project was designed to address this issue and received funding on a national merit-based competition. During project implementation, exploratory surveys have conducted, findings-based solutions have adopted in practice with promising results. The paper presents the conceptual framework of the Adapt2jobs project, the main activities, and results and how these converged with the current trend in university-business cooperation. The study limits emerged from the scale of the project implementation, and from the response rate registered at the business cohort. Nevertheless, the paper has a clear, practical value which demonstrates that the university-business cooperation can be efficient in curriculum adaptation to the labor market requirements. The study has a real potential for duplication in a wider context, and a comparative analysis is needed to identify good practices in the field, nationally and internationally.