Education in Manufacturing – Youth Perception, Competences, Curriculum Develepomented, Integration of Education with the Industry

Many new challenges have arisen for Slovenia as a full member of the EU from May 2004, and also many opportunities. On the one hand we have some successful economic players who can definitely gain from the new opportunities. On the other hand some structural changes still have to be accomplished. Among all of them one of the most demanding tasks is related to the higher educational system related to the harmonization of the EU and global educational systems. In relation to that, we can also observe a significant increase in the number of students enrolled in social sciences and, consequently, a relative decrease of the number of students enrolled in natural and technical sciences and engineering, where the number of students in the last ten years remained the same. In the paper results of international framework for a Master degree curriculum in manufacturing strategy is presented and also an example of integration of competences in technology and business. Approach is a good example of meeting Bologna goals to establish a system of easily reckonable and comparable educational degrees and to accelerate employment of EU citizens and competitiveness of the European higher educational system. In order to gain insight into the values of the youth a parallel analysis has also been preformed showing that perception of the youths related to the science and technology is similar as at the EU developed countries.