This paper presents the opportunities offered by the Economic Sciences Faculty from Oradea regarding the taking of the role of an active student as a condition of the student-centered education. It also includes a quantitative research on the availability of the first-year students to take the role of active students by involving themselves into the curricular and extracurricular activities. The research method was a survey based on a questionnaire on a 92- student sample. We have also developed a qualitative research based on the focus group method in which seven students of the faculty participated. Starting from the research results we have suggested a series of extremely important projects to implement the student-centered education within the Economic Sciences Faculty from Oradea, the most important being: Excelsior – the involved student community, the professional portofolio of the students and the student magazine Excelsior.

The ideas presented in this paper are to represent a part of a good practice guide on implementing student-centered education within a high educational institution. The concern for this concept is determined by the current context of the high educational system in Romania characterized by: the intensification of the competitive environment; increasing employers’ demands; increasing high school graduates and students’ demands towards the quality offered by a high educational institution; the performance indicators used by ARACIS in the evaluation of the universities, a very relevant example being the graduates’ professional route in the labour field. We are convinced that the ideas presented in this paper are important to the decision factors from the academic environment, factors that should initiate and facilitate the implementation of the student- centered education concept.