Abstract:

Studies on quality of higher education are more and more highlighting the importance of practical skills within the educational process. Thus, universities focusing on practice are highly valued by students, graduates and employers alike as compared to the theoretical ones and they do seem to be more attractive to future students, especially to international ones. But, how should academic institutions create and implement the Knowledge Triangle: for a specific topic/subject/field of study or for an entire programme of study? This is one issue presented in this paper. It addresses the benefits of creating and implementing the Knowledge Triangle within a study programme delivered by academic institutions and it clearly shows that quality is improved under such circumstances. The results generated have as a starting point the outputs of the European Erasmus+ funded project entitled "European Framework for Knowledge Triangle in Logistics (FRAMELOG)".

Another issue herein presented is the importance of building an international Knowledge Triangle as the national one does not respond, in our view, to universities' internationalization strategies. Nowadays, students of different origins come and go around the world with the purpose of receiving education and gaining international experience. Hence, when creating and implementing a national Knowledge Triangle, universities make all their students (domestic or international) familiar with national (even local) stakeholders, mainly reducing students the chance to increase skill development and employability. In this respect, this paper analyses if an international Knowledge Triangle would bring more value to study programmes and the implied educational process by presenting results generated from primary data gathered with different categories of stakeholders.

Keywords:

Internationalization, Knowledge Triangle, Framelog, employability, study programmes.