Enhancing Innovation in Higher Education Institutions: Case of Romania

Introduction

Higher Education Institutions play a central role in the sustainable development of societies and economies due to their academic autonomy in performing the universities’ main functions (education and research) and to their capacity for innovation (Uhl and Anderson, 2001). In this context, Higher Education Institutions are challenged to deliver high-quality and equitable outcomes that are in accord with the world market economy requirements. This implies that Higher Education Institutions understand the crucial necessity to educate successful students prepared to face the rapid changes of technology and economy in a complex and interconnected world of “digitalized era” or “knowledge society”. One of the most important step made by stakeholders is to identify key aspects that help for developing national and international strategies that are applied by Higher Education Institutions for implementing innovative practices based on an eligible regulatory framework for innovativeness of higher education. The changes in innovativeness of higher education through the innovative practices do not radically modify the traditional Higher education institutions’ functions and objectives, but provides new ways of doing traditional things that respond more efficiently to the permanent changing requirements in the market economy of knowledge society and higher education in the world. Each country of the world and each country that is part of the European Union system is responsible for its own higher education system based on academic freedom interconnected with vision of the international system of education. The role of Higher Education Institutions is very complex, but obvious. In this context, this chapter will present the state of innovativeness in higher education in Romania, as it becomes a key priority for all key stakeholders. In the case of Romania, the higher education system tries to be connected to the international strategies, and especially to European Union strategies, to use new technologies, new methods in teaching-evaluation process based on student-centered vision of education. At the same time, Higher education institutions in Romania try to be in a partnership with other organizations, especially businesses, connected to the market economy environment. The partnership between Higher Education Institutions and labor market is always very dynamic, and yet insufficiently active. In the case of Romania, it is absolutely necessary to develop coherent educational policies to support innovations in university education. These must be correlated with the requirements of the business environment and the public needs for the development of public services, so that the development of the Romanian society will be accelerated and sustainable. The role of policy-makers at national and international level should be to define good and effective educational policies, to establish a clear regulatory framework that eliminate possible blockages regarding innovative practices, compatibility of innovative practices in different countries, taking into account the phenomenon of globalization, the changes of supply and demand for higher education, and other variables.

The structure of the chapter is organised on theoretically and empirically parts based on the case study of Romania. Firstly, at theoretical level, we intend to highlight the role and importance of innovations for higher education, taking into account the sources from the scientific literature. Starting from the positive impact of higher education on employment outcomes, at both individual and societal level, we will emphasize the importance of innovation in higher education. Secondly, we intend to explore the current state of innovativeness in higher education in Romania, taking into account the strategy and legal framework developed at national level based on international guidelines. Another important objective is to present the drivers and barriers of Romanian innovativeness in higher education. One of the most important challenges of this research is to identify and quantify the impact of innovativeness on key stakeholders. At the end of this chapter, we will summarize the results of the empirical study conducted on Romania, and draw some policy recommendations to improve outcomes and efficiency.