“We turn out about 12,000 to 15,000 engineers a year, about as many as Hungary and Czech Republic, which are much smaller countries than Romania. Romania has a deficit given its current development trend, not to mention the trend getting faster, we need at least 180,000 until 2020, which technically we are unable to deliver. The schools as they are can only turn out 50,000 to 60,000 students in these three years, so we really have a serious deficit,” Peiu said. He served as advisor to Prime Ministers Radu Vasile and Adrian Nastase in late nineties and early 2000s.
The largest crop of engineers comes from the Russian Federation, which turns out about 450,000 a year. The US turns out quite a few, because many migrate to the US from the neighboring countries, Peiu said on ZF Live.
“The biggest producer of engineers in the world besides China and India, whose statistics are not trustworthy, is the Russian Federation, with 450,000 engineers a year and seven times Romania’s population. South Korea turns out 150,000 a year, it is the top country by global inventiveness, while its population is 50 million, twice and a half Romania’s population. The USA turns out 250,000 but absorbs many more. The Western countries in Europe don’t turn out that many, either, because many come from other parts of the world. Germany, for instance, turns out 100,000.”
He believes a solution to boost the number of engineering students and graduates would be a public-private partnership, in other words private investors should invest in the education system and the government should pay for the students.
“The West shows us education is an industry, an industry where investments are really expensive. The solution could be a public-private partnership, i.e., let the private sector partner make the investment and have the government finance the students like it does with public universities, possibly somewhat more to be able to recoup the investment (…)”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)