Abstract:

Engineers and managers in Romanian industry are increasingly facing atypical problems in their work, whose solutions require a lot of creativity. The knowledge accumulated during university studies is partly proven unnecessary in practice, because of the speed of technological changes taking place globally and organizationally. This weakness is often deepened by the lack of creativity of the staff with high-level studies in Romanian enterprises. We appreciate that the root of this problem must be sought in the teaching system in the universities from the technical field.

The selective research tried to evaluate the way the academics use creative teaching methods and the degree in which they involve the students in research projects or other activities designed to develop creativity. The study presented in the paper focuses only on one of the three branches of a wider research that analyzed the improvement of creativity in students from their perspective (on a branch), from the teaching staff perspective (the second branch) and from the employers' perspective (the third branch). We note that the results presented in this paper are focused only on the views of academic staff in the field of study. These results draw attention on the fact that academics of the Romanian technical universities neglect the enhancement of creativity in students and don’t value it with consequently repercussions in the industry at later stages.

Keywords:

Creativity, skills, teaching methods.