Knowledge Management and Higher Education Crisis.

The global crisis we have to face now is no longer just an economic and political one as many people believed at its starting point. It is a much more complex crisis, whose nature is much more complex: it is mostly a moral value-based crisis. Due to this complex nature of crisis one important issue is that we have to look at how the crisis is affecting education, learning and instruction. Firstly, the education crisis manifests by revealing the fact that traditional ways of thinking and acting are no longer sustainable. According to St. Julien, the current framework of learning theory is no longer adequate and as Shotter (In Doll W. E. et all 2005) states 'we totally fail to acknowledge for what learning really involves in all its dynamic complexity'. As expressed by scholars from different fields of cognitive sciences, neuroscience and educational science, it was agreed upon finding a new, more integrated framework for building a 'New Learning Science' (Jolles et al., 2005). Within this new framework, we have to rethink the concept of learning. The presence of many theories of learning and instruction may be interpreted as both demonstrating and hiding the complexities of learning. Education is a complex system, with all the properties that are characteristic of a complex system, and that is why it is necessary for researchers, policy makers and educators to adapt their educational actions and decisions accordingly. Under this complex framework knowledge management approach applied for the higher education system might be quite fruitful. Higher education institutions have to be reconsidered as complex knowledge-based organizations that might be able to achieve, consolidate and improve their performance on their road to becoming effective and efficient based on knowledge management approach. Our paper tries to identify where and how the principles of KM are applied in Romanian higher education institutions. Based on our research outcomes, some conclusions and future possible strategies and KM tools are reconsidered in order to manage the higher education crisis in a competent way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]