Technical education and economic development in the new member states: Romania case study.

Botezatu, Elena ; Botezatu, Mihai Alexandru

1. INTRODUCTION

An extremely important indicator in identifying industries with good development potential is the one which quantifies the number of newly created jobs. Analysis of the relevant fields shows that the firms activating in construction, transport, storage and communications fields are the most dynamic, they are in the process of expansion and have a much higher capacity to generate new jobs.

These are in fact the sectors that have a deficit of labor force, and the request for qualified personnel is high; on the other hand, there are multiple opportunities for work in other countries for those with such qualifications.

Another problematic issue refers to the incapacity of the superior education system to integrate into the Romanian research and innovation system. Thus, even if the quality of the students would meet the requirements of the new economy, the technical education system would still lack a vital component: the connection to the business environment, the capacity to transfer knowledge and to capitalize the potential synergies between a good human resources capital, innovation and the market.

According to this, the success of the technical education system is not only defined mainly by a high level of knowledge and the effective possession of cognition techniques, but also the total preparation for professional activity (Laporte, 2007).

The paper starts from the following basic premises:

1. Among the key factors for development, the most important were identified as a good human resources capital and innovation.

2. The existence of these factors cannot be achieved unless the country has a good education system, to prepare the future labour force.

3. Among the key qualifications in today's knowledge economy (or aspiring to become a knowledge economy), technical skills are crucial; a good pool of qualified technicians will most certainly provide the leverage for competitiveness;

4. The economy must have a functional transfer of knowledge between universities and RDI units towards the market Authors' contribution is related to determine the key elements for re-designing the education system on long terms.

2. REGIONAL CONTEXT

Economic competitiveness nowadays stands under the umbrella of knowledge and information. Rapid technological progress, associated with the development of information technologies is what the third industrial revolution is all about, and the new panacea for economic development.

The key to capitalizing the advantages of the knowledge society stands not only in possessing certain assets, such as: a good research and innovation infrastructure, a highly-skilled labour force, a competitive industrial base, but also in creating the necessary synergies so as to be able to have a good transfer of knowledge from education and research towards the business environment (Botezatu, 2007).

The Lisbon Agenda has made these issues a priority for the European Union, which was found lagging behind the US and Japan in terms of technical education and RDI--business transfers. Repeatedly, it has been pointed out that qualified engineers of core industries do not meet the demand of the market, whereas the number of students who chose to specialize in a technical field is decreasing (Pokholkov, 2001).

The European Commission has identified something called the European paradox. This refers to "... the European seeming inability to turn excellent research results into globally competitive products ... It does seem that Europe's advanced science is too often taken elsewhere to be exploited commercially -usually to the United States. (EU performs excellent science, but lacks transfer capacity)." A few significant characteristics emerge when looking at the current European superior education systems:

* universities often receive less funding for research

* university staff is usually paid less than in the US

* general mentality is reluctant to the cooperation between universities and businesses.

Apart from these features, that are common throughout the European Union, a few othrs emerge in SEE countries:

* severe underpayment for staff;

* lack of facilities;

* outdated, theory-oriented curricula;

* little or no research activities;

* no link between to the business environment.

On the other hand, businesses regard RDI institutions, including universities, as completely outside market needs and thus do not take into account research results; moreover, universities are regarded not as sources of highly-trained, qualified people, but instead of people with basic specialization that need extensive further training in order to become productive, increasing costs (Johnson, 2008), (Mastromatteo, 2007).

This, along with the economic developments that have unfolded in the region, the transion and passage to capitalism has lead to a reorientation of students towards legal and economic studies, which proved more lucrative and with better changes of becoming employed, whereas technical qualifications, such as engineering, were left behind, along with the depreciation of the economy.

3. THE ROMANIAN SITUATION

Romania is currently facing the challenge of getting its education system, particularly its higher education system, recognized as part of the European education. Although Romania is aligned to the Bologna process and has noticeble results in international competitions or technical fairs, it constantly fails to provide a pool of well trained, highly skilled technical professionals. This in turn translates into several effects on the economy:

* an increasing pressure on the national and regional labour market, as companies encounter difficulties in finding qualified labour force;

* low productivity, low capacity of internalizing new techniques, methods or strategies, in other words a vicious circle of poor economic results;

* brain drain;

Recently, a new effect is increasingly visible: an artificial upward pressure on wages, as a consequence of lack of labour force, without correspondence in productivity or skill, which is leading to constant unbalances in the economy, causing inflation.

As one can observe, while the total number of graduates increased almost four times, the share of technical students decreased severly. The year/year developments presented in the figure 1 below provide an even more interesting picture.

While the total number of university graduates in Romania increased almost four times, technical university education went through a severe decline, reaching a record 14.935 graduates in 1998/1999, in the context of the economic recession and restructuring of all industrial sectors.

At present, the country benefits from a steady growth, fuelled partly by the end of the transition, by significant foreign direct investments and by a revival of the economy. In this context, the demand for technical skills has picked up slightly and the trend is expected to continue near future, and the share will increase (Turowski, 2002).

As a positive thing, employment in trade (Figure 2), a sector with huge potential in Romania, continued to grow both in relative terms and in absolute terms, reaching almost 10% of the total labour force occupied, although the creation of jobs and economic growth in this sector is possible and even desirable (weighted average trade in employment is 21.2% in southern Europe, respectively 18.6% in the north) (Voinea et al. 2005).

4. CONCLUSIONS

In order to prepare highly qualified technicians, it is universally recognized that the traditional understanding of professional education as mastering a certain sum of knowledge based on teaching fixed subjects is insufficient and hinders the forming of the new style of thinking. The basis of education must not be taught subjects but rather ways of thinking and activities.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Since the 1990's the number of Romanian graduate students has increased from 25.927 (of which 18.344 in technical education) to 108.475 in 2004/2005 ((of which 24.054 in technical education).

Fueled by the European integration, Romania has the unique opportunity to make a shift in its development path and to redesign its education system, so as to make technical studies not only more attractive, but also more market oriented, so that they can provide a solid knowledge base and an incentive to the future labour force.

However other problems arise, which are related more to quality, than to quantity. The Romanian technical university education is not prepared to make the leap into the knowledge economy: it lacks the means, the people and the mentality.

In redesigning the education system, some key issues must be considered:

* improving university endowment and staff motivation and qualification;

* encouraging research and knowledge transfer;

* encouraging collaborations between the universities and businesses, by promoting clusters, industrial parks etc.

* preventing brain drain by incentivating companies to retain graduates.

5. REFERENCES

Botezatu, E. (2007). Romania Between the Challenges of Competitiveness and Regional Cohesion. Available from: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1015206 Accessed: 2008.06.23

Johnson, W.C. (2008). Innovation and Student Achievement: Why Employers are Worried and How Educators Can Respond, paper presented at the Association of American Colleges and Universities Annual Meeting, January 2008, Washington, D.C.

Laporte, B.(2007). Building Knowledge Economies: Education in a Global and Competitive World, paper presented at IFEES Global Engineering Education Summit, Istanbul, September 2007

Mastromatteo, M (2007). Opening debate on engineering education reform, Engineering Dimensions, vol. July/August 2007, pages 19-21, Professional Engineers Ontario, Toronto

Pokholkov, Yu.P. (2001). Problems of engineering education in the field of high technologies, paper presented at the 4th UICEE Annual Conference on Engineering Education, February 2001, Bangkok, Thailand

Turowski, J. (2002). Technology and technical innovation transfer in engineering education, World Transactions on Engineering and Technology Education, Vol.1, No.2, 2002, pages 159-162, UICEE

Voinea, L.; Simionescu, L. (2005). Annual Survey Report on research, development, innovation and competitiveness in the Romanian industry, Group of Applied Economics, Bucharest