BUILDING MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS WITH UNIVERSITY ALUMNI
BUILDING MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS WITH UNIVERSITY ALUMNI

Summary/Abstract: Innovation economy demands new skills and competences, creates the need to repeatedly and regularly improve one's knowledge and skills, therefore the link must be maintained between labour market requirements and higher education offer. As solution to above mentioned tendencies strategy proposes that educational and cultural education institutions should become the centres of social networking, in the management of which parents, teaching staff, students, alumni, as well as wider local community, including entrepreneurs, representatives of professional and sectoral associations, participate and co-operate. There is a particular emphasis on the need to develop programs of voluntary mentors. In year, 2017-18 higher education institutions in the UK and Ireland raised 1,082,803,835 GBP in total voluntary support [1]. Alumni donations constitute 26% of the entire amount raised [2]. This experience proves that keeping meaningful contact with alumni is a long-term strategy and eventually results in not only intellectual cooperation but also a substantial source of financing. Alumni engagement activities have proved to be an effective tool providing life-long learning for alumni, experience exchange between experienced alumni and young alumni and students as well as, in the long-term, financial support for the universities by alumni and their companies. History of alumni relations, customer management perspective as well as a puzzle game solution for curriculum design are being discussed in this paper. Paper is based on the Riga Technical University's example, EXTEND project case studies also publicly available statistics/data.

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