Abstract:

The research objectives that we want to accomplish throughout this paper refer to the main challenges that the HES confronts globally. The importance of education resides in the fact that increases the probability of being employed on the labor market and the earning capacity improves. Human capital is considered by the education component contributing to increasing productivity and earnings and it represents also an important factor of company’s production. In our view, a careful analysis of education as a vector of socio-economic development is a difficult and complex procedure. Building models of economic growth, based on econometric methodologies, revealed the interdependence between level of education and macroeconomic performance. Within the sections of this paper we want to emphasize the links between the components of HES and of the global economy. We want to outline with figures and statistical reports that investments in a solid education of students will contribute to the future formation of adult population with higher skills, which in turn contributes to increased productivity and economic growth. In other words, the reports show that graduates of formal education, doctoral, master's degree, they earn more compared to those who participate in forms of lifelong learning or other training courses for specific skills within the job. The analysis will allow us to highlight the advantages that education integrates into the mechanism of valorization of human potential, therefore, representing a fundamental factor of development and economic growth. Both the status of education as one of the important pillars in human capital formation and the multidimensional nature of human factor influence on the socio-economic, impose the idea that education must subordinate the national interests. We argue that education and the higher educational system are two distinct but strongly connected issues. In our opinion, the main way of valorization and development of the human factor, the superior capitalization of creative and forward-looking human potentials is the process of training and retraining, cumulative and long-term spread on several levels. In order of priority we mention: improving education, culture and knowledge, technical and professional training, according to the labor needs of the system of economics and human resources skills. Looking at these issues from a different point of view, some countries are focused on producing highly skilled people with a high percentage of university graduates, but not specifically respond to market demands due to wrong policies. All the skills and knowledge acquired by educated people do not go to the right places: engineers work as drivers of minibus or migrate to rich countries, accountants, economists work as salesmen, economists as sellers in shops and the list goes on. This involves far more problems hiring and focusing on the years of experience, to the detriment of focusing on studies completed and developed competencies. Another issue is the small difference between the income earned by a person with higher education and one who graduated high school. We consider that the main goal of our paper is to address critical aspects about the links and gaps between the HES, what it provides and the global economy, what it demands with regard to the education level of individuals.

Keywords:

HES, higher education system, learning competencies, life long learning, kowledge economy, competitiveness, human capital.