Analysis of the impact of the volumes of state commissioning on the economy’s availability of specialists in certain professions

Abstract

In Ukraine, there are imbalances between the specialities of graduates of higher education institutions and the needs of the market, so the issue of studying the possibilities of state influence on increasing the popularity of strategically necessary professions for the development of the country through the state-commissioned education is relevant. The purpose of the study was to determine how changes in the volume of state orders affect the choice of professions and competitive scores, and to develop recommendations for optimising the national policy in the field of financing specialities important for the country’s economic development. Clustering of specialities by the number of applicants enrolled for training was carried out, trends in changes in clusters in dynamics for 2018-2023 were considered, forecast models for changes in the number of applicants for each of the clusters were constructed, and correlation dependencies were determined on the impact of changes in the volume of state orders on attracting capable applicants to the speciality. The results of clustering, the visualisation of which is carried out using graphical methods, to a certain extent determine the popularity of the relevant professions and specialisations among applicants, including the level of sensitivity of the choice of applicants to the influence of external factors. It was determined that fluctuations in the number of applicants in small specialities occur within 1% despite significant changes in the share of state-funded places financed by budgetary funds, but in the cluster of specialities with a large number of applicants, such fluctuations are within 10%. The practical significance of the study lies in the possibility of using the constructed models for each speciality to determine their sensitivity to the impact of changes in the amount of funding for state-commissioned education, which would optimise the distribution of financial resources for training specialists for sectors of the economy.