82 PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS | VOL 44 | 2026 to fill their enrollment: Up to half of available seats remain unfilled (Palijaš, 2024). Enrollment quotas differ between institutions based on their personnel and equipment resources (OECD, 2025). Even if students observe a labor market need for a given STEM career, which would normally encourage enrollment in a related program of study (Petreska et al., 2023), they might not be able to attend a university that prepares them adequately for a job in that sector due to this lack of resources. Some programs struggling to fill seats, like environmental engineering and agriculture, are STEM related and crucial to sustaining growing Croatian industries, indicating that students do not believe that a Croatian degree will lead to a Croatian job despite a present market need. Croatian STEM education is perceived to have a theoretical bias and lacks experiential learning due to insufficient infrastructure and institutional support (Dugandžić et al., 2023; Erceg & Ivošević, 2025; Hornstein Tomi & Taylor, 2018; Palijaš, 2024; World Bank, 2024). An issue at all three levels, this deficiency is pressing in primary and secondary education. Formative encounters with STEM usually involve a hands-on component, such as lab experiments or visits to research or manufacturing facilities. These experiences are crucial determinants of whether students might pursue a STEM career (Dugandžić et al., 2023). Recently, the Croatian government implemented a new curriculum framework based on learning objectives, rather than prescribed topics or sequences thereof, that incorporates more practical strategies for teaching STEM topics (Sertić Perić & Draženović, 2024). This change in teaching has led to inconsistencies across schools and regions in teachers’ confidence in how to deliver scientific content under the new framework (Erceg & Ivošević, 2025). Some teachers appreciate the creative liberties the new framework allows, whereas others are resistant to adopting it (Sertić Perić & Draženović, 2024). Additionally, regions of the country with larger populations and more funding have greater resources to appropriately execute experiential STEM learning (OECD, 2025; Palijaš, 2024), introducing further artificial inequities to Croatian science education (Sertić Perić & Draženović, 2024) and widening the gap between urban and rural STEM preparation. This system inadequately prepares students for the next levels of education, also failing to equip them for their intended careers (OECD, 2025). Generally, Croatian students perform poorly in basic science competencies compared to other EU nations (Dugandžić et al., 2023). The STEM curriculum does not teach transferable skills relevant to labor market needs (Hornstein Tomic & Taylor, 2018), which both originates and amplifies the lack of interest in STEM disciplines. As Figure 2 shows, Croatian tertiary graduates, STEM and non-STEM alike, have among the lowest employment rates within two years of graduation among EU and CEE peers (European Commission: Directorate-General for Education …, 2025). These circumstances feed the brain drain pattern: Students leave for places where they can leverage the skills their degrees taught them. The skills mismatch (World Bank, 2024) in the serSource: European Commission: Directorate-General for Education…, 2025. Figure 2 STEM and total employment rates of tertiary graduates by country, 2024 Czechia Romania Slovenia Lithuania Hungary Slovakia Poland STEM employment rate (%) 98 96 94 92 90 88 86 84 82 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 Croatia Total employment rate (%)
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