Relation between theory and practice in contemporary higher education

The paper summarizes the discussion at the panel session „Relation between theory and practice in contemporary higher education” at the Business Trends conference organized by the Faculty of Economics of the University of West Bohemia in Plzeň, 2014. Afte r brief introduction emphasizing the importance of universities and businesses leading to better preparation of students to their professional careers, Section 1 introduces to the methodology of panel discussion as a research tool and brings references to some examples of panel discussions and their recordings. Section 2 summarizes discussion that took place at the conference panel. It focused on the discrepancies between requirements of companies and competencies of universities graduates, identification o f some barriers of cooperation between those two players and recommendations how to improve it. Section 3 presents t wo case studies describing practices and approaches used to overcome the barriers described in preceding text at two universities – Univers ity of West Bohemia in Plteň and Faculty of environmental and manufacturing technology in Zvolen