Component 2 – university entrants described as A_i{a, b, c, d, e, f} and its graduates with a description in the form of S_i{a, b, c, d, e, f} with the following parameters: a – education; b – work experience; c – specialty (educational program); d – professional competencies; e – personal competencies, including soft skills; f – wishes of the applicant.

Specialists from almost all universities evaluate the motives of entrants’ choice of specialties and educational programs, as such analysis allows to build a marketing strategy. For example, Myroslava Hladchenko presented her research in [19], which states:

«To summarise, as was argued in the theoretical framework, student choice is affected by the combination of sociological and economic factors. The findings of this research reveal that among the sociological factors affecting the Ukrainian students’ choice of university and programme is the gradepoint average in secondary education, family culture and family wealth. Economic factors include incentives such as tuition fees, scholarships and other student support facilities, entrance rules, so cietal expectations, proximity to the university. These factors influence student choice in various ways».

Such conclusions do cover almost all the factors that may influence the choice of applicants, but some aspects need further clarification and quantification.

It is necessary to evaluate the possibility of assessing the impact of many vacancies V_i{a, b, c, d, e} on the choice of applicants.

To do this, we compare the number of vacancies in the labor market with the number of applications submitted to the university, respectively, specialties or their groups. We will analyze the average annual data on vacancies for 2017–2021, and the annual number of applications on average for 2017–2019 and separately for 2020, 2021. The selection in the study separately 2020, 2021 years is due to the hypothesis of the possibility of the impact of the pandemic, both on the labor market and on the priorities of applicants.

In addition, from the site «https://vstup.osvita.ua/ – Admission to the bachelor’s degree» we will take data on the number of applications in 2019–2021 by specialties or their groups in general in Ukraine (allocation of the number of applications for educational programs is made in proportion to this distribution at the university). All actual data are given in Table 2.10.