Labor Potential of the Northern Economic Region of Russia and Vocational Education Issues

Abstract

The modern state of the education system in the Republic of Komi has been analyzed to identify the vocational and qualification structure of manpower in the Northern Economic Region. The evolution of the vocational education system was studied beginning from 1959. It is shown that the education system is developing in line with the catch-up pattern, which implies universal nature of higher vocational education. The non-diversified structure of production in the Republic of Komi makes the vocational education system solve two contradicting problems: performance of the 2020 Strategy focused mainly on translating the region to innovative development, on one hand, and overcoming the labor market imbalance on the other. Two educational clusters are evolving in the region today, associated with the forest and oil & gas industries. Ultimately, the personnel training system should be brought in line with the economic structure of the region in need of manpower.