Formation of Economic Readiness for Professional Activity of Students of Educational Organizations

Relevance. The main challenge of the modern world is the birth of a new paradigm for the development of world civilization, due to «... the strengthening of economic and political interaction between countries, the development of established market relations and the creation of new economic systems associated with modern science and the digital market environment….» These changes reflect the state of economic education of students focused on high-tech production, creation of innovative products with a high share of added value. «The system of higher economic education must evolve taking into account new transnational challenges…», the answer to which should be a high level of economic readiness of graduates as a result of economic education. It is quite obvious that the metamorphoses in global market relations and business are directly related to the renewal of the structural content of professional training and the economic readiness of future specialists for professional activity. The relevance of the stated topic is explained by the need of the world community in a new quality of economic readiness of modern graduates, accompanied by an update of the component composition of economic readiness and ways of its formation.Aim. To test a set of proprietary methods and technology for the formation of students’ economic readiness for professional activity.Methodology. The research methodology included system-activity, competence-based and comparative approaches, which allowed to prove the effectiveness of the technologies used and a set of diagnostic tools, including authors’ questionnaires, tests, game technologies, peer review, as well as methods of mathematical statistics for processing the results obtained. The empirical base of the study included professional educational organizations of the city of Voronezh. In total, 50 students were involved in experimental work (25 students made up the experimental group and 25 students of the control group), methods of analysis and interpretation of the results were also applied in the study. Fischer's criterion was used to establish statistically significant differences between the groups.Scientific novelty / theoretical and/or practical significance. In the course of theoretical research, the concept of economic readiness of students was clarified, the original structural composition of the economic readiness of college graduates was determined, an algorithm and stages of effective formation of economic readiness were developed based on the analysis of world problems in the field of economics. The results obtained in the course of the study on the basis of diagnostic tools, including the original developments of studying the economic readiness of college students for professional activity, allow them to be used both in academic and extracurricular activities, including interactive forms of cooperation with students based on project activities.Results. The concept of «economic readiness of graduates of economic specialties» is analyzed at the fundamental level. The main result of the students’ economic readiness for professional activity formation process was an applied algorithm, which includes the development and the experimentally tested program for providing a model for the formation of college students’ economic readiness for professional activity, allowing to optimize the process of their preparation, significantly increase the level of economic readiness of students by means of original teaching materials (cases, projects, educational tasks, situations, etc.) in the process of training specialists in the commercial sphere.Conclusion. The developed program for providing a model for the formation of college students’ economic readiness for professional activity makes it possible to optimize the process of their preparation and significantly increases the level of their economic readiness. The results obtained during the experimental study also prove that the diagnostic complex developed and implemented by the authors to determine the effectiveness of the formation of students’ economic readiness for professional activity meets the modern challenges of the world economy and has high practical significance.