Numerous contacts with industry and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) representatives have shown the same conclusions. There is an extensive need of computer science and information technology engineers with sufficient knowledge how to manage software and information projects, how to produce IT products well prepared for competitive markets with sufficient quality and standard, how to make business and marketing in a rather new market without old fashioned ideas have been gained from the past.

This project was formed according to two main aspects: business driven aspects and technology driven aspects. The advances achieved in Computer Science and Information Technology have been remarkable during the last twenty years and the gap between EU and developing countries is extending. Teaching Computer Science and Information Technology cannot be just a matter of training engineers to create application programs. It must also provide the students with funda­mental concepts and prepare them for the market in fastest growing and rapidly changing industry.

Computer Studies have different aims and characteristics. In general, students taking the courses are expected to use acquired skills as soon as they graduate, but when their ideas hit the market they face a lot of problems concerning management, business, economic and marketing. The main difficulties arise in project management.

The challenge for educators is to produce courses both flexible and technically oriented enough to fulfil all the essential concepts in these areas. By analysing the guidelines from many European Universities’ undergraduate and graduate programs in computer science we recognize that neither business, economic, marketing concepts are involved in computer studies syllabi and curricula, nor the management principles of projects and IT products.

The current syllabi in Computer Studies at Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics do not involve courses about Project Management and Software Engineering. There are also no existing courses covering Business, Management and Marketing topics. The curricula are shown in the next table.

A very similar situation exists at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in the other beneficiary University. The applied computer science curricula are given in next table.

From these tables it is obvious that both universities offer computer science curricula with no project management and software engineering courses, and no courses addressing topics from business, management and marketing.

In addition to lack of business driven aspects, the curricula also lacks the technology driven aspects, such as new trends establishing technologies by electronic means, i.e. e-World concept with e-Business, e-Commerce, e-Learning etc. The new computer studies curriculum has to cope with the technologies that produce new trends, now reality in most EU countries. This is the reason why we propose a coverage inclusion in course from Web Technologies, Cryptography and Security, Mobile and Ubiquitous computing as core material that all the students should meet. We feel that this project could improve the CS curricula both business and technology driven aspects.

Currently, we need laboratory equipment to fulfil the objectives. We stress that the scientific and educational development have been significantly limited by several wars in the geographical region, security and economic crisis. However, independently of difficulties, Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of) is part of Europe, expressing strong willingness to progress and implementation of the EU positive experiences and support.

The coordinator of the project, FNS does not implement courses with business oriented aspects in current CS curricula and implements only one introductory course with Internet technology driven aspects. Similar, FTS implements only one course with business oriented aspects, but no course with technology driven aspects. Supplementary to this, the economic faculty in FEP and the Departments of SEE have no technical background and e-Business curricula at all. All the beneficiary institutions have a great potential and willingness to implement new technology trends and business aspects in their CS to overcome the elaborated problems.

Origin of the consortium

The EU partners cover both proposed aspects: the business aspects and technology driven aspects. The contractor UOM is specialized in Economic and Social Sciences and the contact person is within the department of Applied Informatics. The other EU partner is specialized in Business, Computing and Information Management complementary to economic and social sciences giving both advantages to the proposed project, especially that the contact person is head of the Centre for Information and Organization Studies.

We expect that the experience that both EU partners have will be used in assistance for definition of curricula and building e-Business infrastructure in all the beneficiary institutions.

Similar to this complementary and fulfilling approach, the beneficiary partners are also different in nature: Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Economic Faculty, Department of Communication Studies and Technologies and Department of Business Administration. FNS is part of the University “SS Cyril and Methodius” with over 36.000 students and staff of 2.300. FNS educates 3000 students with staff of 300. Among them staff of 40 are within the CS department educating 700 students for Computer Studies.

FTS and FEP are within the University of St. Clement Ohridski with staff of 300 educating 5000 students. Staff of 80 educates 2500 students in FTS, among them staff of 20 are within Department of Applied Computer Science educating 400 students. Staff of 40 educates 1800 students in FEP. The proposed objectives are not met and are to be implemented as project outcome.

SEE University exists for 3 years with staff of 200 and educating 4000 students. The Department of Communications Sciences and Technology with staff of 20 educates 750 students and Department of Business Administration educates 600 students with staff of 20.

All beneficiary partners come from different universities and towns (Skopje, Bitola, Prilep, Tetovo), expressing also multicultural and multilingual links since SEE is situated mainly in Albanian dominant populated region on contrary opposite to the other institutions with major Macedonian population. That is why we feel that the partners will offer a very promising possibility for implementation and further dissemination.

This is a really good opportunity for the consortium members to achieve results since all the requirements for the proposed project are covered with specialists: business, economic, marketing, organization and management part from one side and technology support to the other side.

During the previous periods, a satisfactory cooperation between all partners has been introduced mainly in the research field. In several meetings of consortium member representatives, and through e-mails contacts we concluded that the problems are similar at all beneficiary institutions. According to this we have matched our common needs and we have identified the way of their fulfilment. The proposed areas are preferred as priority for CARDS national projects for 807 Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of). Another priority are the close links to economic and social transition process in particular economics and business oriented aspects.

Special attention in this project is given to the new teaching methodology: Interactive Response System, including the use of modern information and communication technology. As an outcome of this project the involved education institutions will implement outlines from Bologna Declaration. All the new developed courses curricula will meet the ECTS principles. Further more, we hope that the beneficiary universities will adopt all the other courses to the ECTS system using the experience and knowledge obtained in this project.