Paradoxes of the Interaction between the Education Market and the Labor Market

Radical transformations in Russian life today, in particular in the economy, are going hand in hand with tendencies in which higher education is involved increasingly in economic relations. The complexity of this process is due to the very nature of higher education, which not only provides for the reproduction of highly qualified professional cadres but also performs many other functions, such as that of social mobility, enhancing the intellectual potential of society, spreading the most socially important cultural norms, and so on. Failure to assess the multiaspectual functioning of higher education tends to bring about paradoxically different opinions both in theoretical substantiation of ways to reform higher education and in assessment of the transformations that have been carried out. As is well known, institutions of higher learning are simultaneously operating in two markets: the labor market and the market of educational services. As participants in the "education market" (sellers), colleges and universities sell their commodity (their service) to the buyers (students or companies), having concluded the appropriate agreements with them, in accordance with the norms and rules of the market, to provide educational services for a fee over a certain amount of time. In the case of the "labor market," on the other hand, the participants are the workers and the employers, and between them deals are made that are in keeping with the market, including, for example, the hiring. In this article, the author discusses the paradoxes of the interaction between the education market and the labor market and suggests that the education market and the labor market ought to serve as elements or parts of some kind of integrated market.