career, career centres, lifelong professional guidance, career management skills
Abstract
Career centres in higher education institutions in Croatia are being formed more intensely in the past few years. The incentive for this development was the Strategy for lifelong professional guidance and career development 2016-2020 which was passed by the Government of Republic of Croatia, as well as various forms of informal professional training for career advisors which were then organized by the Croatian agency for science and higher education or became available through the Euroguidance network (European network of national centres for support in professional guidance) whose member is the national Euroguidance centre which is a part of the Croatian agency for mobility and EU programmes. Experts for career matters generally hold that careers need to be continually guided and if necessary diverted or reshaped anew. Career management requires skills which should be learned during education so that work is more easily found after it. However, the contemporary dynamic labour market barely even recognizes lifelong employment. Thus lifelong professional guidance and development is necessary and with it continued support and guidance which in the context of higher education should be provided by career centres. For that reason, it is necessary to strengthen existing career centres and to create them where they are missing, whereby it is necessary to insure permanent placements, since higher education institutions cannot plan the establishing and development of career centres in the long run, relying on volunteers and employees temporarily or partially employed through projects.
