The Business Environment: A Stakeholder of the University: An Exploratory Approach

Starting from the Romanian Higher Education realities, from study of the international experiences of other universities and stakeholders theory, this paper aims to analyze the relationship between Romanian universities and employers, as stakeholders. The goal of this article is to identify the employers’ opinion towards the strengths and weaknesses of the Romanian Higher Education. This work is part of a larger research aiming to investigate the role and the place of Romanian universities in the today Romanian society. This inquiry is an exploratory investigation which will be used as a foundation for a future quantitative research. The results of this study show that employers perceive a decreasing in the quality of the Romanian Higher Education, in terms of less qualified graduates, both in knowledge and skills. However, they are optimistic about the future and they are ready to help universities. Surprisingly, maybe, the employers do not consider the research activity less important than teaching.