Competitiveness Experiences of Dual Training in a University of Higher Education in Economics

Abstract

Employers’ expectations are key drivers of designing and developing academic programmes and this paper would like to contribute to such processes by clarifying their expectations based on empirical research conducted during an EFOP1 project on developing the dual International Business and Economics undergraduate programme of Budapest Business School University of Applied Sciences, Hungary (BBS). The aim of this paper is to investigate what competences employers really expect business graduates to have at the end of their studies. The paper introduces the dual higher Vocational Education and Training (VET) model, where full-time students are also full-time employees of cooperative companies. Twelve employers participated in the project and the university signed a contract with them. They agreed to employ the young people under the programme. The roots of the currently existing high VET models – as a concept and structure – can be traced back to the “Stuttgart Model”, and to the first attempt at merging vocational training and theoretical knowledge in the 1970s. This model, in slightly different forms, has been adapted in many Member States of the European Union and has gained momentum in Hungary. BBS has been very successful in delivering this model since 2017. The project is purported to improve the efficiency of dual higher VET by joint education and competence-development with employers, who were interviewed about their expectations. The authors of this paper have analysed the employers’ responses and have made recommendations for developing dual higher VET programs accordingly.