The problems of assessing the competitiveness of Russian graduates

In recent times the largest Russian Higher Education Institutions have been aimed at enhancing the quality of educational services and increasing the graduates' competitive advantage in the world educational market. Meeting this challenge Russian Higher Education Institutions have faced with a specific issue: the traditional assessment system makes it possible to analyse only graduates' educational achievements while the employers in their turn specify a wide range of requirements concerning the competences and personal traits of the prospective employees. Thereby, the authors of the paper suggested their own methodology of assessing the graduates' competitiveness, i.e. their ability to be in demand in the competitive labour market. The paper contains the research results of the key requirements which the employers specify for a graduate and the methodology of assessing these requirements. (C) 2015 The authors Published by Elsevier Ltd.