Co-operation of science and business as a factor of improvement of the quality of university education

The purpose of this paper is identifi cation of the direction for university education models that should be adopted to provide graduates with skills that will ensure them full employability and capability to respond more fl exibly to changes in the labour market. As the experience of other European countries show, university teaching must address the needs of future employers and produce graduates they wish to employ. Consequently, a new teaching model must be developed, capable of being easily adjusted to the rapidly changing economic market. A proper solution in this respect seems to be cooperation of establishments of higher education with businesses, especially when it comes to including enterprises in the process of drawing up and implementing university educational programmes. Foreign and domestic examples of effective implementation of teaching models based on cooperation with entrepreneurs presented in the paper confi rm that interaction with business may be the key element of a successful university education system. In this paper, the complexity of contemporary challenges facing the European Higher Education launched along with the Bologna Process has been presented. In sections 1 and 2 this process is discussed in details, and its goals, i.e. improvement of the quality and competitiveness of European higher education is highlighted. It is also pointed out that implementation of this process means standardisation of the educational system (leading, inter alia, to full European recognition of qualifi cations and diplomas. In sections 3 and 4 it is claimed that because universities function in a certain economic environment, they should include in their programmes the demands and expectations of local labour markets. The need to strengthen cooperation between higher education establishments and employers has been particularly emphasised and supported with examples of such cooperation in other countries. The paper ends with a recommendation how foreign experiences and solutions may be implemented in Poland