The Relevance of Competencies of Business Study Graduates at the Labour Market

This paper provides a brief description of a research study entitled Mislem - ‘Developing Meta-level quality Indicators for establishing a Systematic Linkage between institutions of higher Education and the labour Market’, carried out between 2005 and 2007 (Leonardo da Vinci Project, Sponsored by the European Union). The aim of this paper is to report key findings from the project involving nine partners from four different countries: Austria, England, Slovenia and Romania. It gives an overview of the research methodology framework and some findings of the first, qualitative stage, and second, quantitative stage of the research. Among the most important empirical findings from this 2-year research project was that both employers and recent business graduates agree that the development of certain critical competencies during business education, in addition to acquisition of business knowledge, is considered most important for subsequent success in their careers.