TERTIARY EDUCATION: WHERE TO? AN ANALYSIS AT THE REGIONAL LEVEL IN ROMANIA

Abstract

Education, alongside of employment, research and innovation, climate change and energy, and combating poverty are the fundamental directions of action within the framework of the Europe 2020 strategy. Though still before 1990, Romania has granted very high attention to this area, unfortunately, next years have marked a series of regressions which led to alarming increases in dropout rates. In 2002, the rate of persons who leave early systems of education and vocational training between the ages of 18 and 24 recorded in 2002 a level of 23%. On the other hand, the economic crisis has had a strong impact on this indicator. If in the period 2003-2008 it had fallen to 15.9%, in 2013 was 17.3%, the 2020 target is 11.3%. Based on these observations, the paper analyzes the evolution of tertiary education in Romania, at the regional level in the period 2003-2013 and the ways that it is influenced by the evolution of gross domestic product in developing regions in Romania.