New Institutional Design in Higher Education Systems. Challenges and Features for Universities

The paper aims to support the idea of a new institutional design of higher education institutions in emerging and developing countries (EDC) based on a sustainable partnership between public and private educational organizations. It mostly highlights the importance of nongovernment organizations active in the field of education based on a Romanian example that focus on economics and entrepreneurship education. The paper highlights mostly the importance of the new European academic model and of the triple Helix Model of knowledge production. It focus on the entrepreneurial university model and on the entrepreneurial endeavours in the higher education field. Finally the paper includes the example of a nongovernment Romanian organization – Romanian Center for Economic Education (CREE) created with the support of National Council on Economic Education from United States of America in order to support economic and entrepreneurial education in our country. The most important message of the paper is that under the auspices of the new institutional design of the European universities, higher education institutions in emergent and developing countries(EDC) need to take into account all the possibilities to co-operate both with other similar universities and research institutions but also with the business sector and with specializedinstitutions belonging both to the public or private institutions.