Abstract:

The European Union, through the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna Process, aims to build a flexible, coherent and open to the needs of society higher education system, capable to respond to the challenges of globalization and the need for training and reforming the European workforce. The National Qualifications Framework in Higher Education (ro. CNCIS) defines “qualification” as being the recognition of the value of individual learning outcomes for the labor market, through a study document (diploma, certificate) that confers the legal right to practice a profession. A realistic examination cannot fail to detect an alarming involution of the undergraduate studies programs in the Romanian engineering higher education, which are in a continuous and accelerated process of degradation, which is required to be stopped. In Romania, this situation is the natural result of the dispersion of material and human resources in the higher education system (too many universities compared to the number of graduates with a high school diploma, interested in higher education; an exaggerated diversification of specializations in relation to labor market requirements, which is not interested in a narrow field of specialization, but rather a broad, flexible, European recognized training). Demographic (decreasing school population), social (lack of labor force, caused by migration of labor force and high percentage of apt but unoccupied labor force), educational (increasing school dropout) and economical (the growing dissatisfaction expressed by the economic environment regarding the skills, abilities and knowledge of the graduates) realities, impose on universities a series of measures regarding curricular restructuring. The authors of the paper were part of a project funded by the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research (through the National Council for Financing Higher Education – ro. CNFIS), from the Institutional Development Fund (ro. FDI), called "Gaudeamus Igitur - equal opportunities for education" (Romanian code: CNFIS-FDI-2018-0486). The project was designed to promote the idea that education is the only concrete and sustainable way by which a person can evolve and through which that person can contribute to the general development of society. In this paper, the authors have proposed to disseminate the results obtained in the activities carried out in the mentioned project. The efforts were materialized and finalized by proposing a program of undergraduate studies with one year of integrated master's degree (program defined by novelty and originality in the national curricular offer) and by highlighting the professional skills provided to graduates. The proposal was supported by an documented analysis of some economic realities in Romania and by taking into account the views expressed by the main employers for the graduates of the fundamental field of engineering sciences (particularly in the field of shipbuilding and shiprepair).

Keywords:

Knowledge and skills, professional skills, curricular restructuring.