A New Vision About The Stimulation Of Stem Education In Romania

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education for the future generations of the builders of forthcoming world. The first part of the paper emphasises the critical situation regarding the interest in STEM education by briefly exploring its current condition across the European Union member states. This part shows that the interest in choosing STEM education as a foundation for future career path is confined in all aspects: the number of enrolments, the number of graduates in science and the percentage of tertiary education graduates in STEM from the total number of tertiary graduates. The second part of the paper assesses the possibilities to stimulate the students to select a career path based on STEM and is mainly focused on Romania’s example. This part shows that a new vision is needed for the support of STEM education, from primary to tertiary education. This vision includes the implication of multiple stakeholders, from teachers to industry, from policy makers to local communities. This research has as main results the original identification of barriers, main actions to overcome the barriers and key priorities aimed to stimulate the STEM education at national level. The findings of this paper may be used as best practices to be pursued by policy makers, industry facilitators, schools and universities in order cope with a more competitive world, where the supply and demand of STEM qualified professionals is to be better matched.