Universities’ economic impact and their importance to the surrounding area constitute an old and well-established discourse in the Western countries, yet almost entirely absent among Romanian universities. The paper aims at summarizing some of this international debate and its roots, presenting some methodological approaches in investigating the economic impact of a university to a certain area. Such a complex subject certainly has triggered the interest of various researchers, who have identified a series of factors that underline the imperative of investigating the subject. The severe underfunding, the lack of legislative consistency, the demographic realities and the economic crisis make the necessity of investigating the economic impact among Romanian universities even more prominent nowadays.</p
