The ‘Student Practices’ project is helping to make graduate unemployment a thing of the past for students in Bulgaria. Funded by the European Social Fund (ESF), the project has helped over 90 000 university students to prepare for their future jobs and improve their professional skills by facilitating practical training and internships in real working environments.
'Student Practices’ partnered universities with companies to help students gain experience through practical, in person training and internships. This helped participating students to feel confident in the transition from study to work after graduation.
The project helps students of maths and of the pedagogical, natural, and technical sciences into the workforce, with the aim of addressing skills shortages affecting Bulgaria’s economy. In cooperation with more than 40 universities around Bulgaria, the project employs a tutor from each university and a mentor from each of the partnered businesses to train the students.
Silvia, a student who participated in the project, related ‘the knowledge and skills that I gained are fully applicable in practice.’ Silvia’s success highlights the project’s capacity for enabling students to learn practical skills in science-related subjects through training that works. This training was put to the test during the COVID-19 pandemic when medical students conducted their practical training in hospital COVID-19 wards, helping the country to cope even before they graduated.
The project also worked to strengthen the partnerships between academia and employers through networking and feedback of best practices from businesses to universities on the relevance of their curricula, helping university faculties to modernise their programmes. In doing so, the project improved the capacity of new graduates to meet labour market needs.
The combination of higher education and workplace training was essential in preparing Silvia, and thousands of other students, to get a job after university. ‘[The project was] a great starting point for me when I was hired at a marketing company after my internship there,’ she says.
Project details
- Project name
- Student Practices (Phase 1 and Phase 2)
- Země
- Bulgaria
- Organizace
- Technical University Varna
- Účastníci
- 91 992 university students: Phase 1 – 47 992, Phase 2 – 44 000
- Project start
- 2016
- Project end
- 2023
- Contact details
- Margarita Dzhoganova
m.dzhoganova@mon.bg - Total budget
- EUR 41 716 866
- EU Budget contribution
- EUR 35 459 336
