Educational and professional preferences of secondary school graduates in Veps settlements in modern sociocultural situation

The article deals with the current problem of educational and professional choice of the eleventh-graders of Sheltozero and Shoksha secondary schools located in the territory of the Veps rural national settlements. The purpose of the article is to conduct a detailed analysis of the influence of demographic, economic, historical and geographical factors of the current sociocultural situation on the formation of the graduates' life preferences in terms of education and future profession. The empirical stage of the study was carried out during a comprehensive research expedition organized by the Humanitarian Innovation Park as part of the project entitled “Ways to Preserve Human Capital as an Urgent Problem of the Republic of Karelia”. The methodology toolkit used during the empirical stage included interviews, surveys and questionnaires. During the desktop stage, the obtained results were processed and analyzed. As a result, the conclusions were made about the graduates' preferences regarding the main ways of preparing them for admission to universities and technical schools, the choice of educational institutions for further education, and the choice of a future profession. The general conclusion was that local sociocultural infrastructure obviously lacks resources to meet the educational needs of secondary school graduates, which affects the their professional and life strategies.