Geography degree graduates’ transition to the labour market: process, determinants, prediction

Full Text (PL)
abbreviation (ENG)
Rationale for undertaking the research project; objective of research
Both today's economy and todays labour market are essentially changing. For social geography, this means that the functioning of people in a dynamic reality is growing in importance as a subject of research. People's confrontation with change defines social borders. The nature of that confrontation is revealed with particular sharpness in the transition of graduates of successive education levels into employment. This transition is now seen as one of particularly complex processes in society. It takes place subsequent to the completion of education or self-education, often coupled with temporary work, and is completed at the time of starting a permanent job or self-employment considered by the person concerned as his or her key activity.
Higher education graduates are a particular subpopulation of labour market entrants in that their efforts to build a capital allowing them to find a satisfactory job required the highest investment from them or their families. However, they encounter significant problems both in finding a job allowing them to use their competences acquired during their university education and in finding any job at all. Problems in transition into the labour market entail negative social and economic consequences. They may delay the time when the graduate becomes an autonomous person, an adult in the full meaning of the word, a productive and investing member of the society, and when he or she makes the decision to marry or have children. These delays may result in a downturn of the society's economic standing, decreased birth rate, slower economic growth, growing emigration, declining popularity of a given study subject, growing scepticism about higher education institutions.