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Higher education services are at a crossroads created by the disruptive impact of digitalization. The COVID-19 pandemic experience forced Romanian universities to use digital educational platforms and other online education tools. The questions put into discussion are: Where is Romanian university education headed, what attributes of service quality are relevant for students, how do they see the digitization experience, and what needs to be done to increase satisfaction? A survey was conducted based on an online questionnaire on a sample of 314 students from the University of Oradea that used, for the first time in empirical research, a scale to measure satisfaction with the quality of educational services to which a dimension of digital education is added. Revised importance–performance analysis (importance–performance analysis in nine quadrants with one parameter c-9Qc-IPA) was used for data processing. The results show a still-reserved attitude towards certain aspects of the digitization of services, with priority remaining on aspects related to the material base and the prospects of finding a suitable job after graduation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition from school to work is a main issue with many fields of study. Studies on transition from school to work, have highlight the importance of two categories of factors at the level of the individual formal proceedings which may affect how easy it is to graduate to integrate into the labor market: 1) so far as the educational systems are transmitting specific competences as compared with those general and 2) so far as there are direct links between employers and the education system. In this way, are reduced the costs of selection and allocation for employers. A poor articulation between educational institutions and the labor market produce a high level of unmatched competences of assimilated by formal education and competencies required of the labor market (skill mismatch) (Parodi et al., 2012). The surveys with European employers reflect particular difficulties that they are experiencing in employment vacancies. Investigation on the European companies in the spring of 2013 found that 40% of the firms in the EU have difficulty in finding employees with suitable qualification (CEDEFOP-European Center for the Development of the Vocational Training, 2014). Skills mismatch is a generic term that refers to various types of imbalances between skills and competences offered and those required in the labor market. Concept has become one intensely discussed and submitted to measurement in international research on the background concerns the under-utilization human resource. Numerous opinion polls with employers come to the same unexpected conclusion - that despite high unemployment many posts can't find occupants satisfactorily prepared and identify the causes: most of them criticized the lack of skills of the candidates or the absence of skills specific to the workplace. Based on the latest studies on international databases have built a set of questions that, through secondary analysis, we tried to find answers. Questions that we try to give answer are: What are the main types of skills mismatch? What are the main ways to measure skills mismatch? What are the indicators of skills mismatch? What is the level of over-education and under-education in European countries? How to calculate skills mismatch between demand and supply of labor at European level? What factors explain the different labor market chances of young people compared to adults? What are the predictors at the macro level and individual level of skills mismatch?

In the life of any young person, entering the labour market is one of the most important events. It can be an easy process or, on the contrary, it may be marked by many constraints and opportunities. The labour market for young graduates is different depending on the country in which he lives. Young labour market insertion can occur both after and during school graduation. He or she becomes, in the latter situation, an insider in the labour market. Many countries are reforming their education systems to provide their citizens with knowledge and skills that enable them to meet social and economic challenges of the society. Countries vary significantly from each other in their economic, socio-demographic and institutional characteristics. Our study focuses on the analysis of the University of Oradea graduates in the last four years. The sample includes 529 respondents from different academic specializations both BA and MA level. In this context, in our analysis we have 38% MA graduates and 62% BA graduates, of which 39% married and the remaining 61% unmarried. Of the total sample 78% have a job. More than half of the subjects (53,5%) considered as good or very good the professional training provided by the UO. Validating our hypotheses, the correlation of field of study with the domain of the current job is higher in the case of MA level graduates and, moreover, it predicts the level of satisfaction of our subjects with the development opportunities (personal and professional) provided by the educational programs of the University. It is clear, therefore, that MA graduates are more grateful to the University performance than BA degrees holders. It is proven, that the assessment of the academic programs on behalf of graduates depends heavily on their successful integration in the labor market. The limits of the study are

The project “Practical training of economist’s students. Inter-regional partnership in the labor market between universities and the business environment” focuses on student’s transition from school to labor market. Concretely, it tries to highlight the general role of practical training – specifically the field related practical training set as a mandatory discipline in the curriculum, by identifying possibilities of interventions from supervisors. Starting with literature review regarding determinants of school to active life transition, the present contribution discusses the outline of the practical training set as a mandatory discipline in the curriculum. Within PRACTeam project the practical training itself is accompanied with a series of supplementary services (aptitude testing, counseling, career guidance, mentoring by a trained tutor, granting financial aid, awarding excellence over contests and internships). It represents an active partnership on the labor market meant to address directly students’ expectations regarding practical training, work, and entrepreneurship. At least two main benefits may be derived from the training and tutoring. First, as a dual type model of transition from school to active life, allowing students to become insiders in the labor market. Secondly, changes in supervisor’ patterns of interactions and behavior/attitudes toward work and employees may also occur, which in turn may improve the work. A pretest-posttest non-experimental design was applied for the PRACTeam evaluation. Using administered questionnaires and focus group method to students before and after they completed their practical stages we examined their attitudes and behavior towards elements of the dual model of transition. The paper concludes that a dual type model of transition from school to active life - that implies the education and practice occur simultaneously, successfully meets students’ expectancies and may be functional for improving permeability between professional and academic knowledge.

Data presented in this paper are part of the activities of the PRACTeam project Practice of students in economics. Inter-regional partnership between universities and the labor market" project co-financed by European Social Fund Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013 -" Invest in people! "Contract no. POSDRU/90/2.1/S/64150. Identifying the needs of practice activity had as research tools: focus group and questionnaires. Research subjects were third-year students who have completed the practical work from all three partners: Oradea, Timisoara and Suceava. The results obtained in this research were the basis for discussions during the workshop PRACTeam between student representatives, tutors and practice coordinators. Based on the central elements and highlighted problems were developed materials for both tutors and students. The specific objectives of identifying needs for practical training were: to determine administrative and organizational elements deemed most appropriate for students in terms of practical training, identifying methods of communication between all stakeholders (students, coordinators and tutors of practice) the most suitable in terms of training students, identifying the strengths and weaknesses in relation to the conduct of practical training Presentation integrates the results with emphasis on elements that can be improved, structured around the following areas: evaluation of the internship, access into the practice, conduct practical work (satisfaction with the relationship with the tutor, satisfaction with relationship with practice coordinator, student satisfaction with the activity, satisfaction with knowledge, skills acquired in satisfaction with the practice, satisfaction with communication with colleagues) positive, negative aspects, students' views on improving practice activity.

Models of entrepreneurial behavior focus usually on individual level factors yet a great deal of beginning and running a business depends on the economic, social and institutional environment. Our analysis uses data from the 2008 European Social Survey to assess the weight of country-level characteristics in explaining individual entrepreneurship measured as self-employment of business ownership. The article starts with a literature review which puts the bases of our hypotheses. The results describe cross country comparisons of entrepreneurship rates, individual and country-level regressions of entrepreneurship. As expected, there are large differences between countries with respect to rates of entrepreneurship. A great part of this variance can be accounted for by the division between the former socialist countries and the rest and by levels of urbanization.

When conducting a training program, training providers should ask themselves this question: What are the participants’ expectations? Training providers must correlate their programs with the needs and expectations of participants in order to be successful. Considering there is a need for the professionalization of human resources management activities, we focused our attention on three key occupations of HR: Human Resources Analyst, Human Resources Inspector and Human Resources Manager. To assess the effectiveness of these trainings we used the following research instruments: focus group, monitoring questionnaire and evaluation questionnaire. Our experience with the training programs organized within the Training and Excellence Centre in Human Resources Management has sown us that participants have a great need for knowledge and personal development.

In this paper I will investigate the associative participation in Oradea, on several levels: the participation rates by citizens, the type of associations in which oradeans participate and the profile of these NGOa€™s. I have collected data both regarding

The purpose of the article is to examine the effect of institutional structure of coordinated market economies on the skills and knowledge of youth as hypothesized by Estevez-Abe, Iversen & Soskice (2001) via the PISA 2012 survey. As focal independent variable, a proper country measure of welfare product regime was devised using international available indicators. The theoretical model was tested using multi-level regression of mathematics results of the weighted sample of students from 25 countries that have participated in the PISA 2012 survey. The results show that the expected positive effects on test results of extensive employment and unemployment protection and of larger vocational sector in the upper secondary and of limited participation in the tertiary do not hold. Moreover, several country-level correlations with the averages of test results appear to be statistical artifacts of composition effects. They point to the necessity for further investigations of the interdependencies of social and economic institutions and stratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]