The Impact of Digitalization on Industrial Engineering Students’ Training from the Perspective of Their Insertion in the Labor Market in a Sustainable Economy: A Students’ Opinions Survey

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a survey conducted among a total of 155 industrial engineering students from a Romanian public university to assess their awareness and concern about the facts and challenges imposed by the ongoing digital transformation. The study is based on a statistical analysis of the answers obtained from a questionnaire that contained closed-ended questions with predefined answers and open-ended questions where the respondents could express a personal point of view. Understanding the students’ needs and expectations, as well as the impact of the digital transition on their professional training and integration in a sustainable economy, will serve as a background upon which the quality of study programs can be improved by implementing appropriate measures. The results highlighted the necessity to supplement the curriculum with specialized courses in emerging technologies, to intensify students’ counseling on the digital transition, to upgrade the university’s infrastructure with equipment and software in the field of emerging technologies, to assist students with insufficient resources, and to stimulate women to participate in skilling, upskilling, and reskilling programs in STEM fields. These changes will expand the sustainable development principles in formal university education, ensure competency-centered learning, and increase access to inclusive and quality education.

1. Introduction

In an ever-changing and increasingly unpredictable world where the only certainty is change itself, industry is transforming in significant ways. According to European Union (EU) strategies, the next era of industry will be one in which the physical, digital, and biological worlds are mixed together [1]. The dual digital and green transitions are gaining momentum as driving forces in building a sustainable future, affecting not only industry but all segments of the economy and society in general. Currently, sustainability is no longer just about reducing environmental footprints and cutting waste or using appropriate practices to protect people and the environment across the entire value chain, it encompasses a broader conceptual meaning where considerations of impact pervade all decision-making processes, or simply conducting business in a sustainable manner (sustainable economy) that takes into account the needs of people (society) and the environment [2]. The economy’s digitalization significantly stimulates sustainable development. By using digital data or technologies to automate data handling and optimize processes, it transcends conventional temporal and spatial constraints, facilitating the spread of knowledge and the exchange of information within innovation networks, as well as the intensive integration and efficient use of production elements (greener production), thereby stimulating technological renewal (green innovation), which, in turn, can facilitate new value-creating and revenue-generating opportunities (Figure 1) [3,4,5]. The two interconnected transitions—digital and green—will necessitate new technologies, investments, and innovation, creating new products, services, and markets that will shape jobs that do not yet exist and will require skills that we do not have yet [6].

Industry competitiveness depends first and foremost on recruiting and retaining a skilled workforce. Digitalization, automation, and advances in artificial intelligence will require an unprecedented shift in industry workers’ skill set [1]. The innovative potential of emerging technologies (e.g., generative artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, cloud computing, etc.) clearly shows the need for digital skills to seize the opportunities offered by these tools but also to manage the potential risks they entail.

However, although the digital transformation is ubiquitous and technology is increasingly becoming part of everyday life, many people still lack the digital skills needed in today’s and the near future’s society and economy [7]. A reported 70% of companies recently declared that they are delaying investments because they cannot find people with appropriate skills [1]. According to the latest statistics, at the EU level, only 56% of people (aged 16–74) have at least basic digital skills, compared to a target of 80% by 2030 (Figure 2a) [8,9]. Romania holds the last place in this ranking, with a large gap behind the European average (28% Romania vs. 56% EU), even if the proportion of ICT (information communication technology) graduates among all Romanian graduates is higher than the EU average (6.9% vs. 4.2%) [10,11] (Figure 2b) and the employment rate of ICT-educated people, aged 15 to 34, is 14.6% above the European average (82.4% vs. 67.8%) [12] (Figure 2c). The explanation for this situation is the high digital mobility of Romanian ICT workers to foreign companies while their residence is still in Romania [13].

Under these circumstances, the low level of basic digital skills and the growing need for both advanced and specialized digital skills are widely major concerns [14,15]. Consequently, it is imperative to promote digital literacy through education and training. Education systems must keep up with the digital transformation and adapt to meet its needs in a comprehensive way [16,17,18]. This includes educating, training, upskilling, and/or reskilling people of all ages, particularly young people, to face technological and socio-economic challenges by providing them with appropriate skills and contributing to the promotion of sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all [19]. Nevertheless, the educational system, whether public or private, cannot handle this challenging task alone. The process of preparing a highly skilled workforce for the jobs of the future is much broader and requires comprehensive, synergistic collaboration between several relevant political, economic, and social stakeholders to multiply the intended beneficial outcomes [20,21,22]. However, academia’s role is to understand the needs and expectations of both employers and students, acting as a bridge that connects them and prepares the labor force for the well functioning of a sustainable society (i.e., one in which each individual as a member and society as a whole has learned to live within the boundaries established by the ecological limits without compromising the well-being of future generations [23]). In this regard, the numerous studies presented in the literature serve as evidence.

Table 1. Examples of published studies on the collaboration between education and industry in the engineering field highlighting a global concern for sustainable development.

Ref.	Year	Research Topic	Students’ Training Field	Country
[24]	2015	Students’ digital skills development and their compliance with mandatory norms and employers needs	Marine engineering	Romania
[25]	2018	Transformation of manufacturing systems toward Industry 4.0 and the required skills	Engineering	Greece
[26]	2020	Data strategic design for the development of curriculum to support sustainable industry	Industrial engineering	Spain
[27]	2022	Engineering students’ traits and competencies linked to entrepreneurship	Engineering	Romania
[28]	2022	Development of “student firm” by using digitalization and e-learning approach	Engineering	Slovakia
[29,30,31,32]	2019–2021	Employability of engineering students	Engineering	India, Indonesia, England, Australia
[33]	2022	Role of digital education in the development of skills and employability of engineering students	Engineering	China
[34]	2023	Analysis of digital competences of students pursuing engineering and related careers	Engineering	Chile
[35]	2020	Review of competencies allowing future professionals to work effectively in Industry 4.0	Engineering, Business, Design	Mexico and USA
[36]	2019	Investigation of Industry 4.0 skills for engineering profession	Engineering	South Africa

lists a few of them in the engineering field.

The current paper presents the results of a pilot survey at the “Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacau (UBc), Romania, aiming to address the following questions:

• Are industrial engineering students aware of the digital transition challenges, and how affected are they by the ongoing transformation?
• Are they satisfied with the training provided by the university to help them integrate into a sustainable economy?

The student survey will allow the university to take the necessary measures to improve the quality of study programs in order to prepare a highly qualified workforce for the labor market, thus contributing to the achievement of the specific targets of national sustainable development goals.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. The External Context of UBc in Terms of Digital Transformation and Labor Market

In the new reality of the global economy, characterized by digitalization, robotization, and innovation, Romanian companies have begun to draw more and more attention to the reduced availability of the workforce, especially in the most developed counties and regions, as well as to the limitation of their growth potential amid this challenge. The manufacturing industry, transport, and ITC sectors have experienced the largest labor shortages in absolute terms [37]. According to the estimates of the National Commission for Strategy and Forecasting, Romania will need 440,000 additional employees by 2026 to reach the projected gross domestic product (GDP). The manufacturing industry and trade sector will create the majority of jobs, with a focus on technical, service, and sales specialists [37]. Experts also predict that 2030 could bring Romania more than 1 million jobs in the digital area, whether we are talking about those working in technical domains associated with application development, support, and technology development, or services and support dedicated to population and companies (including the public administration sector) or the creative sector [38]. This implies the existence of a skilled workforce with technical and digital competences, complemented by flexibility of thought and problem-solving skills [39].

However, the European Commission’s assessment reports on the problem of the labor shortage in Romania and its impact on the development of the national economy underline that education, professional training, and higher education are not sufficiently well adapted to the labor market, so that the skills of graduates do not meet the expectations of employers, and the low level of digital skills hinders the increase in the pace of digitalization of Romanian companies [13,40].

In this context, the mitigation of the skills shortage related to the digital transformation would require, on the one hand, improving ICT infrastructure and, on the other hand, promoting digital skills in schools at all educational levels (Figure 3). Higher education providers can learn from digital transformation approaches and models in other sectors, but they have unique needs and complexities that relate to their individual levels of digital maturity. Some of them are creating new digital transformation strategies, while others are incorporating digital elements into existing strategies. To date, both in one case and in the other, important steps have been taken in terms of providing the ICT infrastructure needed to run the educational process. The context created during the COVID-19 pandemic has led Romanian universities to invest in providing the necessary infrastructure to remote the educational process in the online environment. The created facilities are also used in the post-pandemic context, either to effectively carry out online the specific activities of the educational process or to communicate with students and provide them with the necessary educational resources. On 5 August 2022, the Council of the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ARACIS) approved quality standards for teaching, learning, research, and practical and evaluation activities in full-time education using specific synchronous electronic, information, and communication resources [41], according to which “the form of organization of full-time study programs allows teaching and/or research activities to be carried out in a combined and sequential manner, both within the university space and through resources and information technologies specific to synchronous online learning, outside the university space, in a so-called mixed mode of organization. (…) The activities’ design, development, and implementation must take into account the principles of student-centered learning and teaching, as well as the development of innovative learning resources, methods, and environments that make use of information technology tools.”

According to these regulations, at UBc, the Board of Directors and the University Senate endorsed and approved the periods and the proportion of hours of the curricula taught online, based on analyses conducted at each faculty. Online activities are carried out uniformly, using the same communication platform, namely, Microsoft Teams. The Faculty of Engineering allocates 20% of the study program’s curricula to online activities, exclusively for course-related tasks.

The still-unresolved issue is that of digital skills training across all educational levels. This is due to two main challenges facing the Romanian educational system (Figure 4): (1) updating curricula and specialization courses to meet the demands of the labor market and ensure a coherent sequence of them across all levels of education and training; and (2) there is a shortage of teachers with expertise in computer science and other specific or advanced digital fields. These two elements constitute obstacles to achieving the performance indicators established for digitalization of education in Romania by 2027 [39].

An emergent curriculum that trains people for emerging professions involves facilitating learning based on students’ interests and coordinating education in line with current development trends. At present, Romanian employers consider the curricula to be too abstract and insufficiently focused on practical application of knowledge and problem solving [40,42]. Therefore, the new curricula should be competency-based, cultivating curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, adaptability, assertiveness, and the collaborative and civic skills that will underpin emerging jobs [22,38,43]. In this context, the development of digital skills is considered a strategic priority, with the European Council recommending that our country should develop national and even regional strategies so that education and training institutions prepare people for the creative, safe, ethical, and responsible use of technology based on an understanding of its functionality [44]. The curriculum setting in Romanian higher education is the responsibility of ARACIS, and the introduction of new courses and specific skills adapted to the new labor market demands, in the context of current regulations, could be quite a laborious process.

On the other hand, many reports identify teaching expertise as fundamental to improving poor educational outcomes in Romania [40,45,46]. A curriculum dedicated to digital competences (whether as a separate subject or as a topic integrated into other subjects) needs to be understood, agreed upon, delivered, and assessed by digitally competent teachers [7,47,48]. In recent years, Romania has made substantial efforts to promote the digital transformation of the education system, according to the “National Action Plan Regarding the Digital Decade for Romania” [49], yet many initiatives prioritize the use of technology over the development of teachers’ digital skills [10,45]. These skills refer not only to the general purpose of using computers in a teacher’s professional life to communicate, collaborate, and create content, but especially to the specific pedagogical use of digital technologies, a certain type of teaching-learning strategy, a certain attitude toward technology, and so on, i.e., what policy documents and literature call “digital pedagogies” or “digitally supported teaching methods” [50,51,52]. Recent studies show a lack of expertise in teaching digital technologies, especially advanced ones (e.g., AI, cyber security, high-performance computing, etc.), across Europe, not just in Romania [53]. Few individuals specialize in these areas, and more competitive offers from the private sector easily attract those who do. Currently, the improvement and retraining programs and the existing support measures are insufficient to meet teachers’ needs, especially when they refer to specific or advanced digital fields [40].

2.2. Purpose of the Study

In light of the context briefly outlined above, the main objective of the current study was to conduct a pilot survey among UBc’s industrial engineering students to assess the extent to which they are aware and concerned about the facts and challenges imposed by the digital transformation we are going through, as well as their perception of their own level of digital skills, so that the university can implement suitable measures to meet their needs and expectations in order to increase their labor market insertion. The Faculty of Engineering’s members, some of whom are part of the university’s top management, designed and carried out this study with the stated goal of gathering students’ feedback to improve the educational process from a digitalization perspective, thereby contributing to the development of students’ digital skills for professions of the future in a sustainable economy and society. Although they are relevant parties in the educational process, teachers and economic agents were not consulted in the frame of the current study to gather their opinions on students’ training and readiness for the digitalized labor market.

The specific derived objectives we pursued were the following:

• Identify the extent to which students are aware of the new technologies that have emerged as a result of the industry’s digital revolution;
• Gather the students’ opinions regarding the implications of industry digitalization;
• Identify the students’ perceptions of the impact of education digitalization from the perspective of training skills for the labor market;
• Identify the students’ perceptions of their own level of digital skills;
• Identify the weaknesses that students consider the university should overcome to prepare a skilled workforce in emerging technologies.

2.3. The Study Sample

The target group consisted of students from the Faculty of Engineering, industrial engineering field, from all cycles of studies (bachelor, master’s, and doctorate). A total of 155 students (representing 62.25% of industrial engineering students) responded to the survey (43 females and 112 males,

Table 2. The respondents’ distribution by cycle and year of study.

Students	Bachelor 1st Year	Bachelor 2nd Year	Bachelor 3rd Year	Bachelor 4th Year	Master’s, 1st Year	Master’s, 2nd Year	Doctorate	Total
Females	10	6	5	4	7	9	2	43
Males	25	23	15	24	18	5	2	112

), with an average age between 26.16 and 38.5 years old (

Table 3. The respondents’ distribution by average age.

Study Cycle		Bachelor	Master’s	Doctorate
	Age [Years]
Females		26.16	28.94	37
Males		24.55	28.65	38.5

). The acute shortage of production engineers in the labor market, particularly in the aeronautics and automotive industries, which are already undergoing significant transformations due to the green and digital transitions, led to the selection of these students for the survey. In fact, industrial (and systems) engineering is one of the most sought-after engineering careers worldwide [54,55,56], so prospective candidates should receive training that equips them to handle any task and meet the demands of the industry.

The students’ participation in the survey was voluntary. The study was carried out in accordance with the Code of Ethics and Professional Deontology of the “Vasile Alecsadri” University of Bacau, and it was approved by the Ethics and Professional Deontology Commission of the university (protocol 11145/2).

2.4. The Design of the Survey

The questionnaire served as a tool for conducting an anonymous survey. The survey comprised ten questions, eight of which were closed-ended, requiring students to select from a range of options or rank them using a five-level ordinal scale. The remaining two questions were open-ended, allowing students to express their views on the importance of industry digitalization and the skills they believe the digitalization of education should provide them to navigate emerging technologies in a digitalized labor market. A team of teachers different from those who drafted the questionnaire analyzed it and made corrections where necessary. Since the education process in the Faculty of Engineering is carried out face-to-face, the questionnaire was distributed to students in class in printed format to enhance the response rates. The survey was conducted over a period of one month.

The collected answers were processed using Minitab© Statistical software v. 22 to facilitate data analysis and evaluation. The answers to the open-ended questions were grouped based on the similarity criterion, using the working principle of the affinity diagram. The resulting ideas were coded and further used in the statistical analysis.

To aid in the interpretation of the results from the students’ feedback, we added a block of socio-demographic questions (age, gender, domicile, study cycle, and year of study) at the end of the questionnaire in addition to the main questions.

3. Results

The first item under analysis was the students’ familiarity with the emerging technologies introduced by industry’s digitalization, using a five-level ordinal scale (i.e., 1—to a very small extent, 2—to a small extent, 3—neutral, 4—to a large extent, and 5—to a very large extent). The following concepts were considered: Internet of Things (IoT), smart manufacturing (SmMan), artificial intelligence (AI), virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), big data (BigData), robotics (Rob), and machine learning (MasLearn).

The analysis of the responses reveals that, among bachelor students, the most well-known emerging technologies (rated “to a large extent” and “to a very large extent”) are AI (70.53% of students), VR/AR (63.4% of students), and Rob (49.1% of students). The least familiar technologies, rated “to a very small extent,” “to a small extent,” and “neutral” (which, in our opinion, also indicates a limited understanding or even a lack of understanding of the concepts), are BigData (76.79% of students), IoT (68.76%), and SmMan (67.85% of students). At the master’s level, the most popular technologies are MasLearn (75% of students), AI (71.79% of students), IoT, and SmMan (each with 58.97% of students), while BigData (76.92% of students), Rob (48.72%), and VR/AR (46.15%) are the least popular. The most well-known technologies at the PhD level are SmMan and AI (each with 100% of students), as well as MasLearn, Rob, and VR/AR (each with 75% of students). The least popular are BigData (75% of students) and IoT (50% of students). Although there are some differences in percentages, the trend in terms of awareness of emerging technologies is the same for both female and male students (Figure 5).

The next question in the survey examined the extent to which the students perceive digitalization as a factor changing the current industry (question 2). The results show that over 90% of students, regardless of their level of studies, are aware of digitalization’s impact (92.86% of bachelor students, 89.74% of master’s students, and 100 of doctorate students “agree” and “strongly agree” with this situation), with small differences in females’ and males’ way of thinking (Figure 6).

Further on, through an open-ended question, the students were asked to argue why they think it is important to digitalize industry (question 3). The aim was to find out how anchored they are in the industrial reality of the period we are going through. The answers were grouped based on the similarity criterion, and the resulting ideas were coded as follows: eases the operator’s workload (EWL), reduces production time (RPT), reduces human error (RHE), factor of progress (FP), and others (O). The results show some particularities of the respondents according to gender and cycle of study (Figure 7).

At the bachelor level, 40% of female students rate digitalization as a factor favoring quality and operational efficiency, while males view it as a way to ease the operator’s workload (34.48% of respondents) and reduce human error (28.74% of respondents). At the master’s level, both females and males identified reducing production time (RPT) and operator’s workload (EWL) as the main benefits of digitalization (43.75% of females and 34.78% of males). At the doctorate level, increasing quality is the most important aspect of digitization for females (100% of respondents placed RHE first), followed by FP (50% of respondents), while for males, RPT comes first (100% of respondents), followed by EWL (50% of respondents), and other factors (O), such as better database management, faster information flow, increased operator security, and better communication (50% of respondents).

The next question (question 4) asked the students to self-assess their level of digital skills using a five-level ordinal scale (i.e., 1—very low, 2—low, 3—I don’t know, 4—high, and 5—very high). The results show that more than 50% of bachelor and master’s students and 100% of doctoral students rate their digital skills as “high,” both females and males (Figure 8). However, 28% of female bachelor students and 18.75% of female master’s students, and 25.29% of male bachelor students and 17.39% of male master’s students, respectively, rate their digital skills as “low” or “very low.” Additionally, up to 20% of students find it difficult to evaluate their digital skills, which may actually mask a low level of skills, too.

A further issue addressed in the survey was the students’ perceptions of the effect of educational process digitalization on acquiring the technical skills necessary for their integration into the labor market (question 5). Students had to select from four answer options: digitalization has a positive impact on the training of technical students (PI), I do not recommend digitalization (DNR), digitalization has a negative impact on the training of technical students (NI), and I have no opinion (NO). Figure 9 shows that more than 50% of respondents believe that the digitalization of education has a positive impact on technical students’ training. Significantly higher percentages are found for bachelor students (88% of females and 75.86% of males) and master’s students (75% of females and 73.91% of males).

Next, we looked at the availability of the students’ resources for online learning from the perspective of digitalizing the educational process, as outlined in the European Action Plan for Digital Education 2021–2027 [57], and we proposed three possible responses (question 6): 1. I lack the necessary resources; 2. I have resources to a small extent (I only have a mobile phone); and 3. I have resources to a large extent (I have a laptop or computer and specialized software). We noticed that over 70% of students have the necessary resources. However, there are students who stated that they either lack (7 males) or only partially have (12 females and 20 males) the resources needed to conduct an online qualitative educational process (Figure 10).

Question 7 in the survey focused on the availability of high-speed internet in the students’ homes from the perspective of a qualitative digital educational process using online interactive platforms. We proposed four answer variants: fiber-optic internet, cable internet, mobile network, and no internet. The respondents’ answers show that all students have access to the internet. More than 75% of them claim to have a wired connection, either fiber-optic or cable internet at home. However, there are also students who have access to the internet only via mobile networks (13.39% of bachelor students, 17.95% of master’s students, and 25% of doctorate students). In this case, the network coverage and the connection strength and stability could make it difficult to use specialized online platforms and software for a digitalized educational process.

The open-ended question on the skills that digital education should provide so that students and/or graduates can cope with emerging technologies (question 8) had a response rate of only 56.77% (which was comparable with the proportion of respondents who indicated a “large” and “very large extent” familiarization with the emerging technologies in response to question 1). The respondents’ answers were grouped based on the similarity criterion, and the resulting ideas were analyzed. Thus, the majority of respondents (50% of doctorate students, 38.46% of master’s students, and 34.82% of bachelor students) ranked the “ability to operate with specific digitalization tools (ODT)” (e.g., platforms, specialized software, systems, and programs used in emerging technologies, etc.) as the main competence they should have. In this regard, they highlighted the need to enhance or incorporate specific courses into their curricula, like programming languages, CAD/CAM/CAE programs, database management, cyber security, robotics, etc. Some of the first-year bachelor students even mentioned internet usage. Another competency highlighted by 25% of doctorate students, 5.56% of master’s students, and 8.04% of bachelor students was the “ability to use emerging technologies’ hardware components (UHC)” (e.g., computers and computer networks, advanced equipment, CNC machines, robots, etc.). They then added the “ability to search, select, and use resources in the virtual environment (SSUR)” (7.69% of master students and 7.14% of bachelor students). A total of 7.14% of bachelor students and 7.69% of master’s students mentioned “other skills (OS)” such as freedom of thought, flexibility, social and civic skills, and effective communication. There were also students who said they “do not know or have no opinion (NO)” on the matter (8.04% of bachelor students and 5.13% of master’s students). A second-year bachelor student said he “doesn’t need any other skills (NOS)”.

Another item in the questionnaire asked for the students’ opinions on the benefits of digitalization in education, specifically in terms of its contribution to developing specialized technical skills (question 9). The respondents could choose among one or more predefined answers or express their personal point of view. The proposed options included: a. acquiring digital skills to facilitate integration into the job market; b. enabling the use of digital twin systems to gain knowledge and specific skills and competencies; c. enabling cloud storage and access to educational contents; d. enabling inclusive and resilient distance learning; e. facilitating access to internationally renowned experts from academia and/or industry (e.g., via teleconferences and online workshops); f. diversity of educational contents format; g. other (please specify); h. I’m unsure or lack an answer; and i. I don’t perceive any benefits. The results show that both female and male students from bachelor and master’s studies prioritize “acquiring digital skills to facilitate integration into the job market” (option a) and “enabling inclusive and resilient distance learning” (option d) as the most significant advantages of digitalizing the educational process. However, option (d) received priority from the PhD students, with “enabling the use of digital twin systems for knowledge acquisition and the development of specific skills and competencies” (option b) ranking second (Figure 11).

The final question in the survey (question 10) aimed to gather the students’ opinions on the current gaps that the university should fill in the near future in order to prepare a skilled workforce for a digitalized industry. The students could choose one or more answers from the following options: a. the lack or insufficiency of specific courses in digitalization and emerging technologies; b. ease of access to specific bibliographic resources; c. insufficient specific infrastructure; d. teacher training in digital education; e. lack of interactive platforms that allow for the accumulation of knowledge and the acquisition of competences and skills through sequential, real-time assessment of acquired knowledge; f. counseling students to overcome psychological barriers to entering the digital labor market (e.g., fear of novelty, resistance to change); g. insufficient collaboration between the university and digitalized industry; and h. others (please specify).

The graphs reveal that, with varying weights assigned to them, both female and male students identify the same three areas that the university should prioritize in its efforts to prepare a skilled workforce for a digitalized labor market (Figure 12). Thus, more than 50% of female students are primarily concerned about their ability to cope with the new challenges posed by emerging technologies and believe that “counseling students to overcome some psychological barriers to entering the digitized job market (e.g., fear of novelty, resistance to change)” would be beneficial in this respect. In second place, they rank the need for “interactive platforms that allow the accumulation of knowledge and the acquisition of competences and skills through sequential, real-time assessment of acquired knowledge,” and in third place, they point out the need to supplement the curriculum with courses in the field of digitalization and emerging technologies. The majority of male students prioritize the need to supplement the curriculum with courses in emerging technologies, followed by counseling’s role in preparing them for the job market, with the lack of interactive platforms ranking third. The doctoral male students also point out the insufficiency of the infrastructure specific to emerging technologies available at the university.

4. Discussion

By 2030, Europe has ambitious targets concerning the digital transformation of industrial ecosystems [58,59,60]. Digital technologies, including 5G, IoT, edge computing, AI, robotics, and AR, are supposed to be at the core of new products, new manufacturing processes, and new business models. Three out of four European companies should be using cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, and more than 90% of European SMEs should reach at least a basic level of adoption of digital technologies (a “digital intensity” index higher than 4) [15]. Achieving these targets requires a highly skilled workforce, and education providers, particularly universities, should supply such human resources by reshaping the educational process [61,62,63]. “Education 4.0” [25,64,65] and “University 4.0” [66,67] are “concepts” that should go hand in hand with “Industry 4.0” [68,69,70,71,72,73].

In this context, the purpose of this study was to determine how aware and concerned industrial engineering students are about the digital transition’s effects on their professional training and labor market entry. Although they do not belong to an ICT field, these students will have to work in a digitalized manufacturing industry, and as a result, they will need knowledge and skills in this field to use the Industry 4.0-specific infrastructure (e.g., intelligent machines and equipment, advanced robotics, digital twin systems, digital platforms, etc.) and manage specific processes [63]. Furthermore, industrial engineers are essential for the supervision and maintenance of manufacturing and control systems, ensuring their performance and safety in the context of Industry 4.0 [74,75,76].

Herein, we will not reiterate the information from the previous section, but we would like to draw attention to a number of issues that this study has brought to light that may serve as inputs for future university policies and strategies.

According to the results, students’ “anchoring” in the digital transition directly correlates with their age and study cycle. The younger the age group, the greater the acceptance and knowledge of digitalization. The explanation could be attributed to the specific period of their lives. Bachelor students, in particular, and the majority of master’s students belong to so-called “generation Z.” They are those who were born and live during a period of rapid technological growth, using the latest achievements of science and technology in their daily lives [77]. They naturally connect the real and digital worlds [78,79]. The results of question 1 reveal that, at the bachelor level, students have a greater familiarity with “classical” emerging technologies such as AI, VR/AR, and robotics, which they have utilized in their personal and professional lives through digital gadgets, communication, and social networks. Additionally, extensive media coverage and publications, as well as the inclusion of these students as the target group in a university-run project that aimed to develop students’ practical skills and abilities for straightforward job access and specialization in future occupations [80], served as sources of information on digitalization. This is in line with similar findings presented in the literature (e.g., [81,82,83]), showing that students are more familiar with concepts like virtual and augmented reality, robotics, and automatization compared to those like smart factories and Industry 4.0 [84]. As the level of study increases (i.e., master’s and doctorate), the focus shifts to machine learning, smart manufacturing, and AI, technologies that students are already using in industrial practice and research. Big data is the least known technology across all study cycles (it is not associated with the digitalization phenomenon), with IoT following closely behind. However, almost half of the respondents indicated that they knew only “to a very small extent” or “to a small extent” about the indicated emerging technologies, or held a “neutral” position, as per their answers to question 1. Approximately the same number were unable to answer when asked about the skills they should acquire from school to cope with emerging technologies when entering the labor market, as indicated by the response rate to question 8. In this regard, there is a need to supplement the curriculum of industrial engineering students with courses in the field of digitalization and emerging technologies, especially the newer ones, which involve managing large databases (e.g., big data, cloud computing, IoT, etc.), as reported also in [56,85]. Students themselves recognize this need, as evidenced by their responses to both the open-ended question on the competencies that the digitalization of education should provide (question 8) and question 10 on the gaps the university should fill in the near future to prepare a skilled workforce for a digitalized industry. This is consistent with the results of other studies that indicate higher employability for engineering students who possess digital and analytical skills [33,86,87,88]. However, as stated in the first part of the paper, Romanian universities cannot change curricula without ARACIS approval. Therefore, we would need national policies and strategies to address this issue.

The Romanian Ministry of Education should convene specialists from academia and industry to rethink curricula to align it with new labor market requirements. An example of good practice is the Universities of the Future (UoF) project, which aims to address the educational needs generated by Industry 4.0 in Europe by creating educational offerings in collaboration between industry, universities, and public bodies [69].

Nevertheless, until then, what the university can do is continuously update existing courses by introducing topics specific to current trends in the economy in general and industry in particular. In view of this, it would be beneficial to continue increasing the awareness and encouragement of teachers in this direction, for example, by facilitating contact with the economic environment and exchanging best practices with universities both domestically and abroad [89,90,91]. For instance, the EEA and Norway Grants in Romania represent a solution that the university has already benefited from to improve the educational performance of both its students and teachers. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) could be another solution that the university could valorize as one of the most intensive forms of intercultural and interdisciplinary collaboration for both students and teachers within higher education. It enables building bridges between study abroad, instructional design, and teaching faculty through team-taught courses, thereby promoting, integrating, and enhancing international education experiences across curricula [92,93]. Studies in the literature demonstrate the benefits of this approach [94,95]. The Up University Consortium [96], of which the “Vasile Alecsandri” University is a member, could constitute the framework for the implementation of such an initiative.

Also, a greater involvement of local economic agents would be necessary to offer internships, possibly paid, to students in order to motivate them to work as employees in the field upon graduation. Academics should initiate projects with businesses to create collaborative tasks to promote project-based learning and cutting-edge scientific research, involving students, especially those from master’s and doctorate study programs [63]. The more solid the student’s background, the easier their insertion into the labor market would be, and employers would immediately benefit from the employee’s potential without the need for on-the-job training, a practice increasingly common in the economic environment due to insufficient or even a lack of human resources.

Endowing students with the necessary competences for the labor market can also impact the psycho-social environment in which they will activate as future specialists [97,98] by increasing self-efficacy and confidence. For instance, a student from the first-year master’s program mentioned “self-confidence” and “belonging to highly qualified groups” as advantages of digital education in response to question 9, option g. Otherwise, at the end of their studies, students tend to choose jobs outside their field of study that offer them the satisfaction of higher salaries and a higher standard of living, thereby perpetuating the downward trend in the availability of skilled labor for the profile companies. For example, official data from the 2021 Census shows that other counties and countries have taken 20% of Bacau County’s labor resources [99]). These aspects, highlighted by the results of our study as well as other similar studies [100,101,102], are not isolated cases determined by certain contextual circumstances. Placing the well-being of the worker at the center of the production process is at the core of what is called Industry 5.0, a human-centric approach toward a sustainable and resilient industry.

Another important aspect highlighted by students is the role of counseling upon their entry into a digitalized labor market (according to their answers to question 10). More than 50% of the female students and more than 40% of the male students participating in this study, regardless of the study cycle, reported the importance of this process. Other studies in the literature have also suggested that familiarity with Industry 4.0 may inspire more fear than comfort [79,82,103]. It is well known that the real value of the education received is its valorization in the labor market. This assumes that graduates possess both engineering-specific knowledge and skills, as well as transferable skills (e.g., problem-solving skills, soft skills, system thinking, business thinking, etc.) [69] that enable them to come up with technical solutions for specific social needs, thus facilitating their employability [104,105,106,107]. However, without specialized and consistent support during the challenging process of career decision making, particularly in the current turbulent context of socio-political, economic, and environmental changes, young people face the risk of developing a low level of professional maturity [108,109,110]. This risk manifests as a lack of motivation, limited self-exploration and professional opportunities, and passive involvement in career decision making. This can lead to significant personnel fluctuations in the labor market [111,112]. Therefore, the university must continue to not only ensure a theoretical and practical foundation for students to advance their professional development but also incorporate non-formal approaches to prepare students for a future filled with many unknowns at economic and socio-cultural levels. “Soft” skills, which stand for social and interpersonal skills [69], and awareness of their own potential play a significant role in career management [113,114], enabling future employees to work with and learn from each other [30]. Therefore, counseling activities should sensitize students by deepening their understanding of themselves, how others perceive them, and how they perceive others [84,92]. It is worth mentioning that, in the last two years, the university has made important strides in this direction by implementing projects with the general [115] or specific objectives [80] of optimizing career counseling and guidance to better equip students and graduates to facilitate their access to the labor market in accordance with employer requirements.

A third issue that the current study revealed is the availability of resources for both the students and the university to ensure a qualitative education process in light of the digitalization of both education and industry. The students’ responses to questions 6 and 7 showed that, although the majority of them have the necessary resources to carry out the educational process online (e.g., IT equipment, specialized software, and the internet), there are also students who have these resources to a small extent (20.64%) or not at all (4.52%). Considering this, together with their answers to questions 4 and 5, we can see that there is a direct link between the lack of resources and their level of digital skills, as well as their willingness to accept the digitalization of education and its influence on their capacity to acquire specialized (technical and digital) competencies for employment (Figure 13). In this context, the university could assist these students, as it did, for instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, by providing them with the necessary equipment, such as tablets, as well as access to free high-speed internet and specialized software applications in the university campus. Other researchers also identified learning performance, lack of resources, and fear of change as the most significant barriers to students’ successful adoption of digitalization [82].

On the other hand, in response to question 10 on the university’s ability to provide a skilled labor force in the field of emerging technologies, doctoral students, in particular, but also some master students (25% of female students and 13.04% of male students), signalled the insufficiency of the specific infrastructure available at the university. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that, currently, even many factories lack the necessary equipment to meet the demands of the digital transition, necessitating significant financial efforts. However, the university is in the process of implementing, with a deadline in 2025, actions for the development or updating of its infrastructure to allow the introduction of innovative digital teaching-learning methods and the realization of practical training and research internships for students (e.g., Digital Manufacturing Lab, Robotics and Functional Process Automation Lab, Physical-Chemical Process Digitization Lab, 3D Innovative Hub, Virtual Reality Immersion Lab, Artificial Intelligence Lab, AR/VR Mixed Reality Lab, Cybersecurity and Information Security Through Blockchain Lab, etc.).

The study’s findings also show that female students are slightly more open to digitalization in terms of labor market preparation than male students (according to the answers to question 5), a trend the university should capitalize on by developing policies and strategies to encourage female enrolment in technical training programs [116,117]. In this context, it is worth noting that, for over a decade, female students have represented less than one-third of the total number of engineering students at UBc. This is fully in line with the New Industrial Strategy for Europe [1] on women’s training and access to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) occupations and topic-related studies [118]. Although women constitute 52% of the EU population, only 1 in 3 STEM graduates and 1 in 6 ICT specialists are women [119,120]. Increasing women’s visibility and engagement in the digital economy could help address the EU’s ICT skills shortage and drive economic growth and wider social progress, as stipulated in [69,121,122].

5. Conclusions

The digital transition, and particularly the digitalization of industry, implies significant technological transformations. Emerging technologies and smart equipment will require a highly skilled workforce with advanced competences.

The role of technical education is to keep students, tomorrow’s specialists, as informed as possible about the industrial reality and to prepare them accordingly. The current study, which is part of this approach, aims to understand the needs and expectations of students from industrial engineering specializations (bachelor, master’s, and doctorate) regarding the digital transition and its impact on their professional training and job market integration. The students’ feedback will enable the university to take the necessary steps to meet these needs at the highest level.

Therefore, using the two questions that initiated our study as a point of reference, we can conclude as follows:

• Yes, more than 50% of industrial engineering students understand how the digital transformation affects their training as specialists and their access to the job market.
• No, up to 40% of industrial engineering students indicated that the university needs to make additional efforts in the following areas to facilitate their integration into a sustainable economy:
  • Supplement the curriculum with specialized courses in emerging technologies;
  • Intensify students’ counseling, including on the digital transition, its challenges, and its risks;
  • Upgrade the university’s infrastructure with equipment and software in the field of emerging technologies;
  • Assist students who lack or have insufficient resources to carry out a qualitative digitalized education process;
  • Stimulate women to participate in skilling, upskilling, and reskilling programs in STEM fields.

To address these needs, the university is implementing dedicated projects. Further research will be able to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the measures taken in terms of students’ advanced technical and digital skills training coupled with their degree of insertion into the labor market. However, the process of preparing a skilled workforce for the jobs of the future is much broader and requires comprehensive collaboration between several relevant stakeholders (e.g., educational leaders, industrial actors, political representatives, etc.).

Limitations and Future Directions

Although the study’s results hold significant importance for future university policies and strategies, it is important to acknowledge some limitations. The study was not conceived as a sociological survey. The goal was to assess the students’ technical knowledge and digitalization skills, which could serve as a background upon which the quality of study programs can be improved. The study’s findings revealed that digitalization has wider implications for individuals. For instance, students without resources are reluctant toward digitalization and do not see the advantages for their professional development. A student with a residence in rural areas (where access to digital resources is often poor compared to the possibilities offered by urban environments) reported the psycho-social and emotional impact of digitization on the individual (increase in self-esteem, acceptance into upper professional teams). Therefore, future surveys should holistically analyze the impact of digitalization on individuals. Furthermore, the representativeness of engineering students should be broadened by incorporating other engineering programs into the study and boosting the proportion of industrial engineering respondents. The opinions of teachers and economic agents about the impact of digitalization on students’ training for the labor market and how these views align with those of students will be the subject of a future study. It is too early for the university to validate the effectiveness of the measures it is implementing to prepare a digitally skilled workforce.