The role of university - business partnerships in increasing students entrepreneurial skills

In this paper, we first bone up on the literature as regards the relationship between universities and the business environment and its role on the development of entrepreneurship as an engine of economic growth. We continued the paper by presenting this relationship in the context of introducing projects related to entrepreneurship within the University of Petroșani. In the methodology part, on the one side, the university - business entity partnerships are statistically analyzed and on the other side, the results of a enquiry that was applied to entrepreneurs during 2019-2021 within the POCU project ”EU - ENTREPRENEUR - increase of students participation from vulnerable categories to undergraduate study programs through entrepreneurial innovation ”POCU Contract /379/6/21. The paper brings to interesting conclusions about the relationship between universities and entrepreneurs and how it can intensify the efficiency of this collaboration from the perspective of increasing the entrepreneurial skills of students.