One of the reasons for the imbalance of labor markets and educational services is that applicants choose the universities and the specialties that are unclaimed in the present and future labor market. The article presents the results of an empirical study on identifying behavioral patterns of applicants when choosing a direction of study and higher education institution (2021, N = 4228), which was conducted among 10th and 11th graders of the Republic of Bashkortostan. We considered the results of the survey broken down by three territorial blocks: the capital (urban district of Ufa); urban area – 8 urban districts; rural area – 54 municipal districts. The analysis revealed three irrational patterns of behavior among applicants: 1) choosing “easy” humanities and economic specialties as the subject of the Unified State Exam (USE), not allowing to enter the desired in-demand specialty; 2) desire to enter a “promising specialty” not related to the choice of the USE; 3) applying for specialties not related to the choice of the USE subject and the desire of the entrant. During the study we found that the irrationality of an applicant’s behavior in a difficult situation associated with the multiparameter choice of training program and higher education organization becomes one of the causes of imbalance in the labor and educational services market in the region. We determined that further research on the behavior of applicants should be conducted in the following directions: modeling and forecasting behavior of applicants (development of a comprehensive agent-based model of the educational system of the region, allowing for computational experiments to assess the impact of various mechanisms of state influence on the behavior of agents (applicants), and the development of practice-oriented and interactive methods of vocational guidance among school students, especially in rural areas
Keywords
labor market, educational services market, sociological survey, agent-based modeling, behavior of applicants, irrational behavior, imbalance of educational services and labor market