Higher Education in the Eyes of Economic Operators

This research is a reflection on new challenges in the economy called Industry 4.0, which has brought about revolutionary changes in many areas of life, including education. To fully use the potential of smart products, services and business opportunities that are expected to be widely used in all sectors in the near future, education systems need to be revised to produce the skilled labour force required by this dynamic process. The ability of companies and institutions with a strong IT and technology infrastructure to reflect advanced digital technologies in innovation and production processes requires specific skills, described as 21st-century skills. Education 4.0 should be a response to these challenges with changed learning and teaching paradigms. In this context, we have organised an extensive survey on the relationship between the economy and higher education in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We have created a web questionnaire that contains desirable characteristics of new employees and a set of questions, the analysis of which was used to determine an actual connection between the economy and higher education. After the factor analysis of the questionnaire, we obtained four desirable characteristics of new employees and the assessment of employers on their representation in each individual. We also concluded that the current impact of the economy on the processes of adopting new curricula is very low. We got the impression that higher education and economic development run in parallel, often without any points of contact.