Slobodan Radičev

Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia

Livia Di Stefano
Adjoint researcher at Department of Political Science,
University of Bologna, Italy
 Similar objectives
 Focuses on two main objectives:
 improvement of higher education in Serbia
 attraction of foreign direct investments
 only with the help of foreign investments
Serbia will be able to achieve the goals set
by the strategy itself
 Focus on the foreign companies that operate
in Serbia
 Our survey consists of 11 questions
 closed and open questions
 We have focused on:
 reasons why foreign companies establish business
in Serbia
 how satisfied they are with workers who
graduates from Serbian universities and
 what they think about how we can improve
university education in Serbia
 The questionnaire was in English and Italian
languages
 The questionnaire was sent together with a
cover letter to 215 e-mail addresses of
foreign companies operating in Serbia
 113 were Italian
 In total, we received 21 answers of which 6
came from Italian companies
 The list of foreign investors in Serbia was
retrieved from the websites of:
 The American Chamber of Commerce in Serbia,
 The Foreign Investors Council in Serbia,
 The Italian Institute for Foreign Trade (ICE) and
 The Serbian Chamber of Commerce.
 To validate list, we’ve checked information
on the ownership for each company through
the web site of the Serbian Business
Registers Agency
 The answers ranged from 27 years, the
company that operates the longest,to 4
years, the company that operates the
shortest. The average time for all companies
from our research is about 9.5 years, of
which 71% started a business in the last 9
years
Assign values from 1-min to 5-max according to the importance
of each factor in determining the choice
 Low labor costs average mark is 2.83
 Availability of skilled labor average mark is 3.17
 Market opportunities in the country average
mark is 4.57
 Infrastructure and logistics average mark is 2.17
 Low taxes average mark is 2.71
 Free trade agreement with the Russian
Federation and/or other advantageous trade
agreements average mark is 1.5
 Policies to attract FDI, government incentives
and other facilities average mark is 2.5
 The answers ranged from 3 employees (the
company that had the least employees) to
about 700 employees (the company that had
the most employees), and the average
number was about 180 employees
 The answers ranged from 3 employees (the
company that had the least employees with
university degree) to 480 employees (the
company that had the most employees with
university degree), and on average
companies have 103 employees with
university degree
 The answers ranged from 3 employees (the
company that had the least employees who
graduated from Serbian universities) to 470
employees (the company that had the most
employees who graduated from Serbian
universities), and the average number was 99
employees who graduated from Serbian
universities
 All companies rated the competence of
Serbian graduates as medium or high,
average mark is 3.57
 This question was open-ended so that the
people who completed the questionnaire
freestyle could fill in the field below the
questions. We analyzed and systematized
answers and here are the most common: in
the first place is language skills including
some foreign languages, after that coming
understanding of the local culture, attitude
at fast learning, etc
 This question was open-ended so that the
people who completed the questionnaire
freestyle could fill in the field below the
questions. We analyzed and systematized
answers and here are the most common:
almost everybody wrote no practical
experience for fresh graduates. After that,
the next disadvantages were lack of
communication and relational skills,
weakness in business writing, no experience
of team working, etc
 As some companies indicated more than one
profile, we analyzed and systematized the
answers given, coming to the following
results: the most frequent response was
engineers and economists, with about 70% of
companies putting engineers as the most
needed profile and 30% of companies
indicating economists. Only in the 15% of
cases companies also mentioned other
profiles requiring a university degree
 As the question was open-ended, we
analyzed and systematized answers:
according with the result of previous
question who pointed out the lack of
practical experience for fresh graduates, all
the recommendations we received were
related only in the way that students get as
much practical and informal knowledge as
possible prior to graduation
 more importance to the availability of skilled
labor than to the availability of cheap labor
 norelevant differences are to be observed between
sectors of activity and/or size of company.
 foreign companies rate the skills of Serbian
graduates very good, with knowledge of
languages (Serbian, English and Italian) featuring
among the strong points
 as we also analyzed answers according to the
names of the people who filled in the
questionnaire, we found foreign nationals to be
more satisfied with Serbian graduates then Serbs
 Italian investors seems to be more satisfied
with Serbian graduates than other foreign
investors
 The frequent complain about lack of
practical and informal knowledge among
Serbian graduates almost clearly highlight a
weakness of the Serbian university system at
the same time identifying a well defined
target for possible improvements