Abstract:

In the last years, many of the Romanian HR companies pointed out that most of the universities graduates are not prepared for the labor market- they don’t have the knowledge and the competencies required by the companies. In the same time many efforts were made by the universities in order to adapt the curriculum to industry expectations but it was not enough. In this context Babes-Bolyai University (BBU) has implemented a European founded project called University Interaction with the Industry (UII). The main objective of UII was to improve the quality of the university educational curriculum to answer the specific requirement of regional industry. To do that 420 students, 90 university teachers and more than 60 members of business companies were involved in debates, focus-groups activities, specific trainings (eg. Professional competencies evaluation, Career counseling) and curriculum development activities. At the end of the project the participants have proposed 84 strategies that might improve the competencies of future bachelor degree graduates from BBU. The efficiency and the sustainability of the results, analyzed a year after the project implementation, revealed the impact of such initiatives and the need for a continuous collaboration between higher education and industry. More details on the results and on the project activities are discussed further in this paper.

Keywords:

Industry, education quality, higher education.