NEW CHALLENGES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION: COLLABORATION BETWEEN LECTURERS-STUDENTS-COMPANY

One of the most important requirements of the European Higher Education Area is that the students acquire a set of general and specific skills by the time that they have completed their training courses. In some academic specialties, these skills are sometimes difficult to acquire. For this reason, innovative learning techniques have been developed. In this sense, the mechanical engineering degree specialties assist the future engineers to acquire a set of skills that will be applied in many cases to solve the problems encountered in their his professional lives. Furthermore, lecturer of the Polytechnic School of Industrial Engineering are in close contact with the real needs of private companies and as partners are often asked to solve these real problems. In this paper, the collaboration between lecturer-students-company is shown to solve a real problem in a private company and can serve to help students to acquire specific and general skills. Solving the problem involves studying a broken hub of a rotary machine, which failed, resulting in a reduced number of operating cycles at the private company. The results of this study showed a high level of student motivation and that the numbers of important skills for the professional life of the future mechanical engineers were acquired.