Higher Education and Graduate Employment in Albania

Abstract

In the social and economic transition, the Higher Education in Albania has tremendously ocercomed its capacities and the opportunities offered. Albania is considered the champion country in Europe for the high number of universities. Besides the public universities, in the country also operate dozens of private universities. in Albania there are about 20 universities per million inhabitants, (161500 students for a population of 2,8 million people), nearly eight times more than countries like UK that have internationalized higher education and have a very large percentage of foreign students. This paper takes into account the development of higher education and the responsible institutions of this development during the transition in Albania, the current structure of universities, the financial problems and the reform of higher education. It also examines issues such as: the measurement of quality, the ranking and the competition between public universities and private institutions. Then the focus of the paper runs on the employment of the young graduates who have finished albanian universities in the last five years. Firstly, relying on foreign literature, I have analyzed some of the main models of employment of graduates, their skills in the labor market, and also the changes that have occurred in the careers of the graduates in the last century. for the extraction of data are used questionnaires distributed electronically to over 230 employees that have brought significant conclusions about the employment of graduates in Albania, as well as the impact of such factors as: GPA, the training, the number of foreign languages spoken and other qualifications and skills that affect the level of salary and their position at work. Also starting from the above models, the scope is to identify the key elements that affect the careers of albanian graduates, and the key factors that have driven their employment. In the end of the paper are given some conclusions and recommendations on how higher education in Albania should be reformed, given by the sample responses of the interviewers, but also by a concrete analysis of the problems that are facing this sector in Albania, and how this reformation of higher education can increase its fruits on more qualified and employed youths in their respective fields. The methodology used is mainly from primary sources, ranging from the data collected by the respondents, as well as from secondary sources of data published for this area of study. The main limitation of such a work is the limited number of samples under the survey, the data of whom has been generalized for all the population of the paper.