Structural imbalances of regional higher education systems and the labor market

Introduction: the article analyzes the higher education efficiency and discusses problems and imbalances in its development. Objectives: to determine the relevance of the areas of training offered by the higher education institutions to the economy structure and the needs for specialists in the labor market, to assess the balance of regional higher education systems. Methods: methods of comparative, statistical, graphical and cartographic analysis of the data available from Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistical System (EMISS), Federal State Statistic Service, Monitoring of higher education organizations and Monitoring of graduates employment of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation for the period of 2016-2018. Results: the structure of specialists graduation in regional higher education systems, due to the influence of many factors, is often determined not by the needs of regional economies, but by the demand of the population in the field of education as well as the preferences and ideas of the applicants. This leads to an imbalance on the labour markets and inefficiency in spending public and private funds on higher education. Conclusions: the development of coordinated management decisions in the personnel training system aimed at its congruent balanced development and achieving a balance of economic interests of all actors should be focused on creating effective foresight tools for forecasting the promising directions for the education system development and taking into account the needs and competitive advantages of the region.