PROJECT "ECONOMIC EDUCATION IN BULGARIA 2030" OPNOIR 2014-2020

UNSS and the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria (KRIB) held a final meeting on the "Economic Education in Bulgaria 2030" project on April 28, 2023 at the KRIB headquarters.

The event is organized within the framework of project BG05M2OP001-2.016-0004-СО1 "Economic Education in Bulgaria 2030", under which UNSS is the main beneficiary and implements the project in partnership with the Academy of Economics "D. A. Tsenov" - Svishtov, the Burgas Free University and the National Sports Academy "Vasil Levski" and KRIB. The head of the project is the rector of the UNSS Prof. Dr. Dimitar Dimitrov, on the part of KRIB, the head of the project is the executive director and member of the Management Board Evgeniy Ivanov.

On behalf of UNSS, the meeting was attended by Prof. Dr. Tsvetana Stoyanova, Vice-Rector for Institutional and Business Cooperation and Student Policies, Associate Professor Dr. Rosen Kirilov, Vice-Rector for Digitalization and Cyber ​​Security and Project Coordinator, Dr. Venko Andonov and Desislava Stoyanova from the "Information Technologies" Directorate.

On behalf of KRIB, Irina Yordanova - Director of Public Policy and International Relations and Project Coordinator, Elitsa Pesheva - Program Director, Lyudmila Antonova - Director of Membership and Events and Rumyana Georgieva - Director of Industrial Relations and Parliamentary Secretary participated in the event. of KRIB.

As a result of the partnership between the two organizations on the project, a platform "Information Connectivity of Career Centers" was developed. It will provide an opportunity for a close relationship between employers and students, respectively, in the search for the necessary personnel and finding a job in the specialty.

"With the development and implementation of the platform "Information connectivity of career centers" as a result of our cooperation with KRIB, we are taking another step in the implementation of the planned activities for the modernization of economic education in Bulgaria. This platform will bring added value to both students and businesses. On the one hand, it will give employers the opportunity to look for the personnel they need, with appropriate education and with an accurate profile of specialization, and on the other hand, for students to find the right job in their specialty," commented the Rector Prof. Dr. Dimitar Dimitrov.

Irina Yordanova greeted the attendees on behalf of KRIB Executive Director Evgeniy Ivanov. She thanked the rector of UNSS Prof. Dr. Dimitar Dimitrov for the good cooperation and fruitful joint work on the project and emphasized: "We are extremely pleased that we had the opportunity to participate as a partner in this project, as well as the concrete results we achieved . We hope that as a result of the implementation of the project, support will be provided to UNSS students for the development of their entrepreneurial skills and for their digital creativity. From our point of view, the value of this project is primarily expressed in the fact that we are deepening the connections between business and education, creating a product that KRIB member companies will be able to use to have even better access to information about students with the aim of realizing the students from UNSS in their career development, as well as in our companies. We also participated with expertise in the development of some of the curricula, one of the other activities of the project, providing information on exactly what new curricula and new directions the business needs," said Irina Yordanova and added: "But the main KRIB's activity, for which we engaged highly qualified experts from UNSS, was primarily expressed in the following: At the first stage, an analysis was made of the possibilities for the development and applicability of a common web-based platform for information connectivity of the career centers of the higher schools participating in the project; the second stage was related to the creation and testing of the common web-based platform for information connectivity and the third stage was the development of a mobile interface and implementation of the platform”.

Prof. Dr. Tsvetana Stoyanova recalled that there has been a long-standing successful cooperation between UNSS and KRIB and this project is a logical continuation of these partnership relationships and stated: "I am extremely pleased that we are now at the final stage where we can present the finished product - the result of the work on the "Economic Education in Bulgaria 2030" project. The goal when writing the project was, on the one hand, to improve the relationship between science and business, because this is among the priorities of both higher education and UNSS. It is for this reason that the Rector of the University Prof. Dr. Dimitar Dimitrov, when he took office in 2020, decided to create the position of Vice-Rector for Institutional and Business Cooperation and Student Policies in my person, because he highly values ​​the relationship between higher education and business. As a result, many other partnership memoranda were signed with business representatives. For the implementation of the specific task, we developed the theoretical framework related to the study of different types of software and platforms in order to be able to find the most suitable one on which to present our proposal for career connectivity. The best specialists in the field of information technologies of UNSS worked on the platform so that we can see it in its finished form at the moment. We believe that the UNSS career center, which has a 20-year history, with 1786 registered employers and annually has about 8000 job and internship announcements, was the worthy leading member of all the career centers from the other higher schools that are included in the project. This is also the reason why the development of the platform for career connectivity fell to UNSS. We hope that after the recommendations and valuable advice from KRIB in connection with our joint work, your members will be able to get involved very soon, post independent ads and look for the employees they need precisely through this platform uniting the career centers of the UNSS, the Burgas free university, of the Academy of Economics "D. A. Tsenov" - Svishtov and of the National Sports Academy "Vasil Levski".

Assoc. Dr. Rosen Kirilov congratulated the participants in the meeting and emphasized: "Thank you for the opportunity to attend this event. The project "Economic Education in Bulgaria 2030" is extremely important for UNSS as a beneficiary, because we have always strived to maintain a high level of information technology and included in the work our best experts in order to be able to build this platform and accordingly support the work of the whole project. I thank the colleagues from KRIB for the overall assistance in the realization of this task".

Dr. Venko Andonov and Desislava Stoyanova presented the opportunities offered by the information connectivity platform of the career centers for employers and students. The two main directions of the platform are connectivity between students and employers and tracking the realization of students in the process after their graduation. The system will include all students of the partner universities and the employers who are members of KRIB, as well as the employers with whom the respective career centers of the universities partner. Each of the partner universities and KRIB will have administrator rights and access to all information with employers and registered students. They will also be able to update and update their information in a timely manner. The platform will enable tracking of students' post-graduation performance by collecting information from surveys, institutions, companies and internet data. Registering and working with the platform is made as easy as possible so that both students and employers can work with it without difficulty.

The project BG05M2OP001-2.016-0004-СО1 "Economic education in Bulgaria 2030" was financed under the Operational Program "Science and Education for Smart Growth 2014-2020", under the "Modernization of Higher Education" procedure. The project is worth BGN 5 million. UNSS should modify its training, respectively the study programs in Economics and Management, in a way that allows them to be similar to programs in European universities and applicable in modern business conditions. The updating and modernization will be done in partnership with other regionally leading universities such as the Academy of Economics "D. A. Tsenov" - Svishtov, Burgas Free University, National Sports Academy and KRIB. Through this cooperation, up-to-date curricula based on digitization will be created and put into practice. 9 digital classrooms and 3 digital laboratories will be operational, which are an irrevocable addition to the modern educational process. This will make it possible to maximize the sharing of resources, including know-how, between partner universities and/or between students and their university professors and mentors.

The project relies on the inclusion of a large part of the teachers participating in its implementation in the programs for improving qualifications and/or for short-term specialization in foreign partners, and the share of young scientists must be no less than 15 percent. It is planned to implement 15 joint programs with partner Bulgarian higher schools, as well as to introduce 7 new programs with digital educational content, including distance learning. 2 foreign language study programs will be introduced, jointly with foreign higher schools and scientific organizations.

The project will provide support to students to develop entrepreneurial skills and digital creativity. A 30-month implementation is planned for the project, and all of the above will contribute to increasing the quality of Economics education at UNSS and in Bulgaria, as well as to improving the quality of scientific research at UNSS and in the other partner universities.