About 80 or 90 percent of high school graduates associate their life plans with study in higher and specialized secondary educational institutions and with work in the area of professions of mental labor. However, the real prospect for the majority of youth entering independent life in the 1970s and 1980s is the acquisition of a labor skill. Today the choice of a path in life by youth is in many respects spontaneous and random. Only about 40 percent of those entering (...) higher educational institutions are confident of the correctness of their choice, and about one-third of the graduates are unhappy with the choice they made. When he takes a job, a young person, after ten years in school, is not only compelled immediately to fill gaps in his knowledge and relearn things but to reorient himself psychologically. For many it is only at that moment that the tortuous "search for themselves" begins, and in connection with a job, a migration from job to job. The losses to all concerned that this involves have a common source: the gap between school and life has not yet been closed. (shrink)