Today, young people account for almost 40% of world unemployment. According
to statistics, Ukraine ranks second in Europe in terms of unemployment among young
people. The international staff portal research has found that the number of employers'
inquiries regarding students compared to the pre-crisis period has dropped by half,
while the number of successful job-seekers without previous experience has dropped
by 80%.
The above-mentioned changes necessitate the educational reform and
modernization of vocational training. At the forefront is the problem of training
competitive professionals to meet the labor market demand who are professionally
independent, flexible, adaptive to the changing professional environment, self-
assessing, competitive and able to construct their own professional career.
The purpose of economic education in institutions of higher education is students'
development of economic thinking and mastery of the system of economic knowledge
as elements of economic culture.
Developed countries have considerable experience in addressing similar issues.
The educators and psychologists of these countries have concluded that business
training should begin as early as pre-school age, since people have a life-long
interaction with business environment that values entrepreneurship as a human
characteristic.
The main tasks of economic education are:
- development of students' economically important qualities that increase their
professional adaptation;
- formation of students' economic knowledge and skills to make them highly
competitive at the labor market;
- transformation of students' economic knowledge into economic thinking;
- ensuring the proper level of economic training.
Today, Ukraine creates a new system of economic education that best meets the
needs of real life.
An important component of economic culture is economic consciousness, i.e. the
knowledge of the basic laws of the of a market economy, production efficiency,
production restructuring, production relations as well as management system and
management methods. Economic consciousness provides an understanding of the
economic life of society, the transformation of employees into active and creative
participants of the production process. In the conditions of economic reforms, the
formation of professionals' economic consciousness becomes common and binding.
The constituent of economic consciousness is economic thinking, that is the
individual's ability to comprehend the phenomena of economic life based on the
achievements of science and technology. It contributes to the individual's creative
solution of economic problems and labor tasks.
- 535 -