Abstract
In the paper a specific/innovative approach for educating engineers that was developed at Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at University of Ljubljana (UL-FME) will be presented. It will be shown, how the combination between an academic research and a co-operation with the local industry resulting from common R&D centres (e.g. Centre for R&D evaluations at UL-FME) resulted in improved pool of skills of young engineers entering the industry. This was achieved without major changes made to the curriculum, which is usually perceived as a »must-to-do activity« to raise the applicability/employability of the fresh engineers.
KEYWORDS Industrial-academic co-operation, applied student's projects, industry-based Ph.D. research