Minister of Education, Sports and Youth, Athena Michaelidou said the government’s priority is to connect academic education with the labour market to create employment prospects for young people.

She made the remark in her address on Wednesday evening at the graduation ceremony of the School of Social Sciences and Education at the University of Cyprus.

According to a statement by the Ministry of Education, Michaelidou referred to the priorities for achieving the goals of further developing the public and private institutions of Higher Education in Cyprus.

The minister said that the international promotion of Cyprus as a quality and attractive academic destination to attract foreign students as well as the promotion of intergovernmental agreements for mutual recognition of degrees, aiming at the internationalisation of tertiary education, and the support, through special scholarships, to students who choose programmes with high demand and strong social impact or impact on the development of high-tech services and companies is a priority for the government.

Michaelidou further underlined the importance of the systematic utilisation of the scientific potential available in the universities of Cyprus to shape the country's development policies.

She emphasised that "our priority also includes linking academic education with the labour market, aiming to create employment prospects for our young people."

According to Michaelidou, for this purpose, the Higher Education Directorate of the Ministry of Education, Sports, and Youth has received funding of 1.5 million euros for the project "Development of a National Graduate Tracking Mechanism and Design and Implementation of an Employers' Skills Survey" as part of the broader project "Addressing Skill Mismatch between Education and the Labour Market," which is part of the proposal of the Republic of Cyprus in the Recovery and Resilience Plan.