The Market of Educational Services in the Urals Federal District

The prospects of world economic development are determined by the character of countries' transition to the new stage of development of productive forces: from industrial production, which was dominated by large-scale mechanized machine-driven production, to postindustrial production, which will be dominated by nonmaterial production--the sphere of services, science, education, etc. Of course, the production of material goods will continue to be important, but its economic effectiveness will be determined entirely by the large-scale use of new knowledge, in particular by innovative technologies and management methods, and by cadres' level of qualifications. In this paper, the authors discuss how a balance in the labor market of specialists and blue-collar workers can be achieved as a result of a structural restructuring of the network of educational institutions, taking account of the needs of the labor market and the consumers of educational services and the current state of education in the region. With this aim in mind it is possible to draw up what might be called "an educational inventory" or map ("mirror") of education for the particular, specific territory. It is possible to achieve an improvement of the economic effectiveness of cadre training in the system of professional education (a possible indicator of which is reduced cost of obtaining a professional education) as a result of shortening the time frames of training in continuous educational programs, reducing the numbers of unemployed and the costs of retraining them in the system of schooling for the unemployed population, increasing the role played by on-the-job training and anticipatory acquisition of a number of narrow specialties (supplementary qualifications). (Contains 5 figures and 6 tables.)