DEVELOPING PRACTICAL SKILLS THROUGH INITIAL EDUCATION IN ROMANIA

Practical skills, developed through different stages, internships or student jobs, etc., play a key role for youth employability, especially in those educational systems that put a high value on theoretical and academic skills. Transition from plan to market and deindustrialization shaped the Romanian educational system, as the firms’ role in providing education and training decreased significantly, and there is still a lot to do in order to re-design the links between education and business sector.

Romania is among the European countries characterized by the lowest participation to work-based learning programs. According to 2016 ad-hoc module of LFS on ”Young people on the labour market”, only 8.9% of Romanian youth aged 15-34 years old had work experience while studying. Out of them 5.6% worked while enrolled under different types of work-based learning programmes, and 3.3 % gained their work experience outside curriculum. More good news come from the survey carried out by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung under the series of FES Youth Studies SEE 2018/2019. According to them, 1 in 4 youth aged 14-29 years old declared that they participated in a practicum or internship within their education.

Current paper aims to analyse the profile of Romanian youth engaging in practicums or internships during their education, as well as their role in facilitating the access to permanent jobs. Classification techniques are employed on the Romania dataset of FES Youth Studies SEE 2018/2019 in order to meet the paper objective.

Acknowledgment:
This paper was co-financed from the Human Capital Operational Program 2014-2020, project number POCU / 380/6/13/125245 no. 36482 / 23.05.2019 "Excellence in interdisciplinary PhD and post-PhD research, career alternatives through entrepreneurial initiative (EXCIA)", coordinator The Bucharest University of Economic Studies”