Additional Education as a Resource for Sustainable Development of a University

Modern conditions of rapid technology development require that hard and soft skills of future specialists in all spheres of economic activity of the country are to be developed even before they start their professional activity while them receiving basic education. The purpose of the study is to identify factors influencing consumer demand in order to choose the most popular programs that can satisfy the requests and needs of various categories of students. These programs are aimed to allow developing and implementing a model of additional education as a resource for the sustainable development of a university. An empirical study to identify the main factors influencing students’ readiness to take part in additional education programs was conducted at the St. Petersburg University of Management Technologies and Economics in September 2023. The study involved 100 full-time students in the areas of “Economics” and “Financial Management” from first to fourth year. The authors conducted a correlation analysis to determine a quantitative measure of interdependence between each of the 10 factors selected, according to the research hypothesis and the readiness of students to receive additional education within the university. All this leads to the idea of the need to review the architecture of additional education as a resource for the sustainable development of a university and develop a new model of the system in the context of developing graduate competencies that meet the demands of the labor market and the current expectations of the consumers of educational services themselves.