Abstract:

Internationalization of Higher Education (HE) has direct implications on adapting the curricula and providing the skills and abilities needed by graduates on the labour market. In this regard, in recent years, universities and researchers have undertaken studies in order to identify the skills that their graduates need in order to be competitive on the labour market. Literature recognizes a range of skills and abilities that are gathered under the term of global competences and are needed by the young graduates both in the recruitment process and in their future career. Also, studies have shown that the graduates with high skills and abilities have mobility on the labor market and are able to work in a variety of cultural contexts. Thus, for universities, it is of interest to identify which are the global competences needed by their students.

In the following, this paper will present an analysis of students’ demand for global competences in the fields of economy and social sciences. To this end, we selected 140 students from the Bucharest University of Economic Studies - Faculty of International Business and Economics and 170 students from the National University of Political Science and Public Administration - Faculty of Communication and Public Relations and we administered an online survey regarding the global competences that students believe valuable for their future workplace and in the recruitment process.

Our study aims to show the differences in perception for the above groups of students for the selected category of variables:
a) skills and abilities used in future career and
b) skills and abilities needed in the recruitment process.

The hypotheses that will be tested in this research are:
H1) There are significant differences between groups for the skills and abilities needed in the future workplace;
H2) There are significant differences between groups for the skills and abilities needed in the recruitment process.

The conclusion will include a comparison of students’ expectations regarding global competences from the two universities, highlighting both similarities and differences.

This paper could be useful for any university which want to understand better the key competences of their students for the insertion on the labour market.

Keywords:

Global competences, Internationalization, Labour market, Curricula, Higher Education.