Efficiency of higher education institutions management and the labour market situation of graduates - an assessment of relations based on structural equation modelling (SEM)

The aim of this publication is to assess the relationship between the effectiveness of university management and the graduate’s position on the labor market. The implementation of the goal serves to verify the following hypothesis: the higher the effectiveness of educational institutions, the better the graduate’s position on the labor market. Additionally, two specific goals were adopted: 1) identification of variables important for shaping the university’s potential and the direction of their influence; 2) identification of variables important for shaping the graduate’s position on the labor market and the direction of their impact. The study used a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach, which perfectly relates observable variables to difficult-to-measure variables. The data concerns Poland and comes from the Scientific Achievement Assessment System and the Graduates’ Economic Career Monitoring System. As a result of the analyses, it was confirmed that there is a positive relationship between the university’s potential and the situation of graduates on the labor market. It was also shown that the factors influencing the improvement of the university’s potential, which should be taken into account in the management process, are the following variables: expenditure on teaching activities and the share of the number of teachers with academic degrees in the total number of teachers. In turn, the improvement of the situation of graduates on the labor market is determined primarily by the extension of the average time of looking for a job.