Baiba Rivza professor, Latvia

 It is important to have the vision, especially in the time of economic downturn, both,  in a national level ( Latvian National development plan in Latvia ,Latvia 2030) and  in a community level, like, EU strategy “Europe 2020”

 Europe 2020 puts forward three mutually reinforcing priorities:  – Smart growth: developing an economy based on knowledge and innovation.  – Sustainable growth: promoting a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy.  – Inclusive growth: fostering a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion.  EU headline targets:  – 75 % of the population aged should be employed.  – 3% of the EU's GDP should be invested in R&D.

 It is important to have at least mid term forecast for the demand and offer of the labor market (Prepared by the Ministry of Economics in Latvia)  To change the development model towards knowledge and innovation based added value production economy  Identified and set priority fields for economic recovery in midterm perspective (prepared by the Ministry of Economics and approved by the Cabinet of Ministers ) (electronic and telecommunication devices, pharmacology, devices for the radiological etc diagnostics, medical devices, chemical materials, instruments etc as well as several services)

 It is important to ensure the education of the specialists, necessary for the fields important for the economic recovery  State financed budget plases in the priority fields – natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, IT, building and construction, agriculture, health, environment, transport, creative industries

Students of 19 state HEI (66%) Students of 15 private HEI (26%) Students of state colleges 5605 (4%) Students of private colleges 5364 (4%) Full time students (57%) Part time students (43%) Students financed by state (23%) Studying for the fee (77%)

 For development of innovation, both, highly qualified human capital and competitive research, are necessary  Several important tasks:  First of all, to assure the governments to recognize even in crisis that education is public responsibility  Improvement of the quality of education to acquire better skills and competences  To enhance the collaboration between educational establishments and employer organisations

 To motivate the students choose the study disciplines in respect with the state needs  To develop lifelong learning system to allow to keep the competences online with fast changing needs of the globalised economy and labor market  It is necessary to increase the regional and international cooperation!!

Latvia University of Agriculture

EDUCATION Providing both higher academic and proffesional education in all 9 faculties:  Agriculture  Veterinary Medicine  Food Technology  Engineering  Forest  Economics  Rural Engineering  Social Sciences  Information Technologies

 Encouraging first year students  Supervision of the final thesis for bachelor, master and doctoral studies  To help to students – young mothers  To promote students research  To promote professional carrer

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