The document analyzes youth unemployment in Romania. It finds that about 25% of Romanian youth ages 15-30 are unemployed. This is caused by a mismatch between the skills graduates obtain in school and the skills employers need. Universities do not require admission exams and have low standards, resulting in graduates without practical skills. The document proposes short, medium, and long-term solutions like strengthening vocational schools, partnerships between employers and educators, and improving career guidance and curriculum standards. The goal is to improve the education system and create jobs to reduce unemployment and brain drain.

1. Connecting for the future
Team HEARTS
Romania
Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of
Economics and Business Administration

2. Experience and discover
Problem Tree Analysis
Youth unemployment = the age group between 15 and 30 years old not working for a
specific period of time, but willing to and being actively searching for work
Team Hearts

3. Experience and discover
Status-quo: aprox. 5 065 000 young people between 15-30 years old
(source: Romanian National Institute of Statistics, 2012)
Problem: 25% of Romanian youth is unemployed:
regional: North-West part, 20.9%
gender: equal distribution of unemployed males and females
long term unemployment: 40%
(source: Eurofound, NEETs- Young people not in employment, education
or training 2012)
Causes:
1. During the communist period, there was high job security and standardized wages thus
pursuing a degree wasn’t a prerequisite for obtaining a well paid job. After 1989, the
misunderstanding of the capitalist values lead people to believe that the only way to obtain a
secure job would be to attend university, regardless of the specialization.
• In order to gain the public sympathy, the ministers gave autonomy to universities and most of them
decided not to require an admission exam and to raise the number of places at an accessible tuition fee.
• Due to the lenient standards a large number of graduates entered the market in search for a job with
false expectations.
Team Hearts

4. Experience and discover
2. Lack of practical skills provided by the educational system caused by inefficient
communication between the actors involved in the educate-employ process, thus:
• The educational curricula are not designed in order to prepare future graduates with both practical and
theoretical skills needed on the market.
• Consequently, graduates are not equipped with the abilities required by employers and are unable to
find a job in order to gain work experience. This leads to delayed career prospects, making it even more
difficult to find employment.
Lack of work experience among NEETs: 15-19 years: 73%
20-24 years: 46%
25-30 years: 62% (source: Eurofound, 2012)
these causes combined lead to the demolition of vocational schools in 2009 which
resulted in the lack of skilled workers even though there is an increasing need for them
One of the main effects is a brain drain of graduates who go abroad for studies or searching
for a job. According to a Romanian magazine, 32.2% of people aged between 18 and 35 years
want to leave the country.
Team Hearts

5. Y
o
Our vision
u provide the chance for open
t discussions between employers, future
employees and the educators in order
h
to improve the educational system and
create job opportunities
u
n
e
m
p
l
o
y
m
e
n
t Team Hearts

6. Short-term solutions
 admission exam at universities
 higher standards of examination (only two possibilities to take an exam)
 partnerships between vocational schools/universities and companies in the
field:
 shadowing activities
 internships
the existence of a career center in each vocational school/university with
responsible teachers and professors to easy the access of their students to
the activities (similar to the Erasmus programme which has a separate
coordinator)
Team Hearts

7. Medium-term solutions
 reinforcing the vocational schools in Romania in response to the high demand of
skilled workers
 those interested in working in fields such as plumbing, constructions,
transportation services, food industry, etc. should be able to receive training
directly from the hiring companies, gaining both a certificate and experience
 actively promote fields that have a deficit of specialists, such as IT, engineering,
sales and hotel industry
 companies based in/having subsidiaries in Romania could offer scolarships for
those interested in studying abroad, under the condition of returning in Romania to
work for the company, this way increasing the quality of our specialists, reducing
the unemployment rate and the brain drain
Team Hearts

8. Long-term solutions
1. Highscool level:
 organizing career days
 having a career advisor to guide pupils and apply and interpret
personality and career tests
 improving the curricula by having a better selection of courses according
to the profile
 taking into account the feedback from pupils
2. University level:
 designing courses in order to encourage critical thinking
 include practical activities such as case studies, real world examples etc.
 higher admission and examination standards, for example making
informal education (volunteering, trainings, internships) part of the
criteria for admission at university
Team Hearts

9. Planned outcomes
The proposed solutions may be implemented in maximum two years.
The first positive changes seen after:
• short-term solutions <3 years
• medium-term solutions <7 years
• long-term solutions >7 years
Although most of the solutions are designed in order to prevent future high unemployment
rate and its side effects, offering the possiblity of proper training and certification directly
at companies is a solution for those already in unemployment. This would be particularly
usefull since the domains with the highest deficit of trained personnel (45% in Romania in
2012 according to Manpower studies) are those most suitable for this programme, for
example: skilled workers, drivers, sale representatives.
Team Hearts