The Project

The research project of the Department of Higher Education (DHE) of the Cyprus Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth (MESY) entitled “Development of a National Graduate Tracking Mechanism and Design and Implementation of an Employers’ Skills Survey” is part of a wider program entitled “Addressing skills mismatch between Education and the labor market’, which has received funding from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (Axis 5.1).

DHE’s research project has the following five main objectives:

1. the design, development and implementation of a National Graduate Tracking Mechanism for the collection of high-quality data on a longitudinal basis from graduates of all Cyprus Higher Education Institutions,
2. the design, development and implementation of a National Employers’ Skills Survey to identify the needs of the labor market in terms of knowledge, skills and qualifications,
3. the participation in the European Graduate Tracking Survey “EUROGRADUATE” (2022 and 2026),
4. the development of a dynamic platform for collecting and analysing data, as well as presenting findings from the three surveys to various stakeholders,
5. the training of DHE’s staff and the development of an appropriate infrastructure for the long-term implementation of the three surveys (National Graduate Tracking Survey, Employers’ Skills Survey and EUROGRADUATE) following the completion of the project.

The three surveys will provide data on a long-term basis and will contribute to policy design and decision-making aimed at reducing the mismatch observed between supply and demand of skills/academic qualifications, making better predictions regarding labor market’s needs for required skills, as well as improving the connection between the Education System with the labor market at national level.

The project has a duration of 5 years (2022-2026) and the contractor of the project is the company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Cyprus after an open call tender through eProcurement.