INTER-INSTITUTIONAL COLLABORATION – A TOOL FOR DIVERSIFYING THE PROFESSIONAL SKILLS OF NAVAL ENGINEERING GRADUATES

Development of higher education in Romania is produced in the larger context of globalization outlined in the Lisbon Strategy and Bologna Process and is on track to achieve a profound reform, which is underway. Traditionally higher education, developed under stable and predictable economy, was mainly aimed at introducing the young people to acquire one or more specific skills to a single qualification. Global economic instability and job insecurity in the long term pushed the young people to awareness of the need for re-qualification, training, and professional specialization, on the purpose of acquiring a set of skills that enable them to carry out specific activities for more jobs.

As currently shipyards face a number of challenges and employability dynamics significantly decreased and as, in traditional manner, the construction and ship repair interferes, on the multiple and complexes coordinate, with the maritime transport of goods, the young graduates of naval engineering began to consider, more and more, the possibility to perform professional activities not only on land but also as staff embarked on board of the ships.

Faculty of Mechanical Industrial and Maritime Engineering from “Ovidius” University and Romanian Maritime Training Centre, CERONAV, have an ongoing collaboration agreement which propose harmonization of their educational strategies. Academic curriculum aimed is initial training of engineers (specialists in the design, construction, installation, operation and repair of vessels and systems and equipment facilities onboard) providing engineering and managerial skills appropriate to the shipyards. The training given in Romanian Maritime Training Centre CERONAV complement the professional skills of young graduates with specific elements of theoretical and practical training needed to function as staff embarked on board of the ships. This specific training is based mainly on the requirements specified in regulations STCW Convention, as adopted in Manila in 2010, and also based on the requirements imposed by the industrial community.

The collaboration of the two institutions has proved to be a recipe for success which is need to be promoted and supported on the intention of diversifying the professional skills of young graduates. This work, by content and conclusions, is presented as an example of good practice on inter-institutional cooperation in the interest of graduates on naval engineering who are offered the possibility of assimilation in shipping, as staff embarked on board of the ships.