INTERNATIONALISATION OF RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT FOR QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION. THE CASE OF ROMANIA

The international dimension of higher education is a topic of intense interest and debate in this first decade of the 21st century. Research & development (R&D) activities are seen as main elements that contribute to the internationalisation of higher education (HE), being an integral part of the learning process. The paper starts by presenting the importance of the international dimension of R&D performed in HE, by bringing to the attention rationales and reasons for supporting the internationalisation of R&D in universities, followed by main indicators used in practice to capture the extent to which R&D is internationalised. The paper presents up-to-date statistical data on the internationalisation of R&D performed in Romanian HE and attempts to analyse the current state of this process, and in the end, to formulate conclusions and recommendations for increasing the internationalisation of R&D in Romanian HE.