Description of the project

This project will be realized as a Structural Measure at the national level in Serbia through six development and four general work-packages, following the Tempus IV priorities and the general Tempus guidelines.

Choosing the subject of Career Guidance is possible to explain within at least two perspectives:

• considering the importance of career guidance in achieving goals related to education and employment
• status and perspectives of career guidance in Serbia, especially perceived from the perspective of national strategic documents

Today’s Europe is highly diverse and pluralistic and it is facing several simultaneous and parallel challenges. Among the others, youth unemployment is becoming a more pressing problem at a European level. Serbia is dealing with similar problems. Beside high rate of unemployment, Serbia has just about 7% highly educated population, students on average take twice as long to complete their studies, on average only 15% of students complete their studies, while total number of students who completed studies is about 60%. These are just some of alarming data collected as a result of research of various associations and monitoring efficiency of studies at public universities in Serbia. In this reality framework, high quality education and training, as well as career guidance and counselling services in higher education gain significance. There is a strong degree of political momentum in the EU and in the individual Member States as information, guidance and counselling are considered key strategic components for implementing lifelong learning and employment strategies at national and regional levels. It is indesputable that career guidance contributes to the accomplishing of important goals in higher education – contributes to higher efficiency, higher level and better quality of human resource, addresses shortage of skills, decreases drop out, but also contributes in achieving significant objectives in field of employment – better preparedness and adaptibility of work force, greater efficiency and mobility.

Through the project activities we tend to build the System of career guidance at university level in Serbia, according to the priorities that define the new paradigm of career guidance – lifelong guidance:

• the centrality of the student in the provision of career services,
• the need to refocus provision to develop the skills of individuals to manage their career and learning,
• widen access to services and improve the quality of the services.

Also, measures and activities represented in the Action Plan of the National Strategy of CGC that directly affect the development of system of career guidance in HE are included, in the elaborated form in the work packages and activities of the project.

Project is focused on development of career guidance in higher education as an integral part of development of system of career guidance in Serbia. Through this project, we will try to contribute to the implementation of certain measures and activities of the National Strategy of career guidance and counseling (CGC), which are primarily related to students.

This Strategy, adopted by the Government of the Republic of Serbia 10th March 2010, represents result of inter-sector co-operation of Ministry of Education, Ministry of Youth and Sport, Ministry of Economy, non-government organizations (BOS), relevant institutions, universities and university career centers. Main objective of the strategy is establishment and development of career guidance and counseling in Serbia. The document itself represents an important strategic framework, and along with Action plan for period 2010-2014 represents a platform for institutionalization, sustainability and further development and promotion of CGC in Serbia. Measures and activities related to HE sector are result of joint process in which all stake holders, including universities and career centers, provided their suggestions taking into consideration current state and perspectives of career guidance in higher education in Serbia. The timing and strategic intersection of identified needs for improvement of work of career centers and planned activities in national strategic document speak in favor of the need to distinguish this topic within other relevant topics as the subject of this project.

At the operational level of the project, development of practice of CGC in HE, focus is placed on building the system of career guidance at university level, according to the priorities that define the new paradigm of career guidance – lifelong guidance (promoted in numerous EU documents): the centrality of the individual/learner in the provision of career services, the need to refocus provision to develop the skills of individuals to manage their career and learning, widen access to services and improve the quality of the services.

Measures and activities represented in the Action Plan of the National Strategy of CGC that directly affect the development of system of career guidance in HE are included, in the elaborated form in the work packages and activities of the project. Primarily: Preparation of part of National program/document for career guidance and accompanying standards – for age group over 18 years, Improving the existing university career centres, Training university students for active and efficient career management, Innovation and modernization of websites for CGC, but also Training in CGC for teaching staff in universities and HEI.

Readiness of the State to be more actively involved in dealing with career guidance system and the establishment of centers of the state universities that work since 2006. represent a suitable basis to integrate “bottom-up”and “top-down” processes in order to strengthen links between policy and practice in the area of career guidance.

According to that, work packages of the project are defined, and goals are: Development of Program of Career Information, Guidance and Education aiming to increase youth employability, Enabling wider accessibility and variety of programs in Career guidance at Higher Education Institutions, Raising the level of recognizing importance of Career Guidance by the policy makers and other stake holders and Development of CGC Programme for Youth and Methodology for CGC centers at Serbian HE institutions.

Benefit of the project will have students, universities, academic staff, employers and policy makers, since the project will enable students to manage and plan learning and work pathways in accordance with their career goals, relating their competences and interests to education, training and labour market opportunities; assist institutions to have motivated students and better connections with employers; assist employers to have motivated, employable and adaptable staff and better connections with university and encourage policy makers to achieve a wide range of public policy goals.