On Romanian Experiences Related to Universities and ICT Industry

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On Romanian Experiences Related to Universities
and ICT Industry

• Vasile BALTAC and Dan Mihalca
• ATIC- The Information Technology and
  Communications Association of Romania

2nd IT STAR Workshop Universities and ICT
Industry Genzano, 26 May 2007
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ROMANIA Economy

• Member EU accession since 1 January 2007
• Rate of growth of GDP
• remarkable in the last 5 years
• Stable exchange rate
• One digit inflation
• The labour force - 9.3 M
• low unemployment - 5.5
• 3-4 M people work abroad
• Local investments and FDI

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ROMANIA ICT deep roots in the past

• First country in Easter Europe to build
  computers CIFA-1957, MECIPT1961, and
  DACICC-1962
• Industrial base built in the 1970s
• Licenses CII-France, Friden-Holland, Ampex,
  Memorex, Control DataUSA, etc.
• research, manufacturing, service, trade and data
  processing organizations
• 1980s a 40.000 people workforce
• Minicomputers Made in Romania exported
• Czechoslovakia, East Germany, China, Middle East
  countries and other markets
• Technologies became obsolete in the period
  1980-1989 due to lack of investments in hard
  currencies

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ICT in Romania 1990-2006

• All world major ICT companies present in Romania
• Romanian ICT best assets
• human resources
• a quickly developing market.
• Romanian education system
• largely recognized as on of the best in the world
  of ICT
• 5.000 new graduates enter the labour market every
  year
• Brainbench Co. puts Romania first based on the
  number of skilled programmers in Europe
• 8.000 software and IT services companies in
  Romania
• a process of acquisitions mergers
• entry in EU will probably accelerate this process
• Many multinationals started create RD,
  production or service centres in Romania
• Various reports appraise eReadiness of Romania
• IT accessibility, affordability, digital literacy
  and content availability yet not completely
  adequate

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IT Industry Romania 2003-2009

• High rate of all IT sectors 2003-2005 continuing
  2006-2009

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Communications Industry

• The communication market similar evolution
• 3G and iMode present

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ICT Diffusion Index
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ICT Diffusion Rank 1998 - 2004
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Universities in Romania

• Extensive network -116 universities
• both public and private
• accredited by a special body belonging to the
  Ministry of Education
• failure of accreditation dissolved
• University network cover all major cities of
  Romania
• Total 116
• Public Universities 56
• Private University with accreditation 32
• Private University with temporary
  accreditation 28

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Universities with ICT specializations

• ICT studies - a long time established reputation
• First graduates of computer engineering
• Politechnica University of Timisoara in 1966
• Politechnica University of Bucharest in 1967
• University of Bucharest and Academy of Economic
  Studies in Bucharest followed quickly
• Before 1989 list completed by universities or
  technical universities in Cluj-Napoca, Iasi,
  Craiova

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Universities with ICT specializations

• 46 specializations in four categories
• Computer, telecommunications and electronic
  engineering (graduation in engineering) - 9
• Informatics (graduation in economics) - 14
• Accounting informatics (graduation in economics)
  - 11
• Informatics (graduation in mathematics) 12
• The 46 ICT specializations in 36 universities
• 20 of them have one or two faculties of ICT
  profile.
• All located in cities with tradition in the field
  and good educators

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ICT Work Force

• Every year 5,000 graduates
• Theoretical and practical skills
• Romania - 13th place in the world as number of IT
  graduates
• On per capita base Romania has more IT graduates
  than the United States, Russia, India or China
• Excellent language skills
• 80 of the IT work force speaks English,
• 25 speaks French and
• 11-12 speaks German including native speakers
• Brainbench IT vendor certifier
• Romania - the fifth in the world after India, the
  United States, Russia and Ukraine as total number
  of IT certified individuals
• Same place as percentage of the population

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Use of ICT Work Force

• 1990-2000 - a serious exodus of the IT experts
• mostly to North America and Western Europe
• After 2000 the trend stopped
• Emigration from 90 to 40-50
• ICT multinationals open have centres in Romania
• software, ICT applications and support
• Alcatel, Siemens, Solectron, Oracle, HP, IBM,
  Infineon, Huawei, Adobe Systems, Microsoft, SAP
  and many others
• Salary increases vs. high quality of individuals
• Romania consolidates its status of near-shoring
  country
• majority of graduates now to stay in the country

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Use of ICT Work Force

• ICT industry - a HR demanding industry
• Large RD ICT centres for export
• High rate of growth of demand for domestic ICT
  companies and IT departments
• A pressure on the specific HR market
• quantity, mainly for several specializations
• quality and experience
• Non IT graduates after retraining programmes
  join the industry
• software programmers, network administrators,
  project managers
• Estimated number 2,500-3,000 per year

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ATIC Survey

• Assessment
• expectations of the ICT industry from
  universities
• expectations of the universities from the
  industry
• Questionnaire
• Number of IT professionals needed annually in
  Romania in the next 3 years, by type of activity
• The distribution of demand by programmers,
  analysts, system architects, data base
  administrators, security experts, salespeople,
  CEO/CTO, etc.
• Estimation of losses by emigration and choice of
  different career path.
• Opinion on the present university offer,
  quantitative and qualitative
• Opinion on the present curricula
• Specializations in critical demand

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ICT Industry Expectations

• General opinion - favourable to universities
• ICT Graduates give satisfaction to employers
• The relative high percentage of non-ICT graduates
  in the workforce proves also the good training of
  engineering, economics and mathematics education
• the largest part of these non-ICT graduates come
  from
• Improvements sought by the industry in the
  education system
• education of professionals
• education at the level of basic knowledge to use
  ICT

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Education of ICT Professionals

• Respondents could not agree on the number of
  graduates universities that satisfy the needs of
  the ICT industry
• Opinions varied from 5,000-10,000 each year for
  the next 3 years
• Losses by expatriation evaluated at 10-40, with
  1-5 losses to non-ICT jobs
• Authors evaluation of need new entries to ICT HR
  market
• 9,000-10,000 each year
• ICT graduates - 90
• Distribution of job profiles of the new entries
• Software programmers 30-60
• System analysts 10-30
• System architects 2-10
• Administrators of data bases, application,
  services 7-15
• Applications security experts 2-10
• Product, application, services sales 10-20
• CEO/CTO 1-5
• Similar estimations were made by respondents from
  universities.

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Education of ICT Professionals

• Specialities claimed to be missing or
  insufficient covered
• telecom network topologies, data base
  administration, UNIX, software testing and
  integration, C, IT Storage Manager, IT Asset
  Manager, Information Services Manager, mobile
  devices programming, project management.
• One opinion stated that the present list of job
  types in ICT is completely outdated
• Universities asked to cover specific demand
• Master degrees and/or other post-graduates
  courses
• Partnerships with foreign universities considered
  a solution

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Education of ICT Professionals Curricula

• Universities asked to update annually their ICT
  curricula
• The present curricula are judged as obsolete,
  not adapted to the new trends in ICT industry
• A major consideration universities insist too
  much on the theoretical training and tend to
  produce super-skilled graduates
• The industry needs a small number of such people
• the rest being too highly skilled become
  unsatisfied with routine work, predominant in
  many companies
• Universities should produce normal skilled
  people the super-skilled should be trained by
  post-graduate programs
• The Bologna process started may solve this
  problem, but still it is on the table

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Basic Knowledge to use ICT

• ICT industry counts on education system, also to
  prepare the people to use IT applications, i.e.
  to have the basic knowledge to use ICT
• ICT is not anymore a product or service for an
  elite
• eEurope states Information Society is for all.
• ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence)
• Licensee in Romania is ATIC (ITC Association of
  Romania) ECDL Romania is in charge with all ECDL
  activities
• Results so far are encouraging
• 75,000 skill cards issued
• 35,000 licenses granted
• Universities responded with enthusiasm
• 35 accredited ECDL test centres in Romanian
  universities
• Several universities adapted IT curricula to ECDL
  and accept ECDL as a proof of practical ICT
  abilities
• One university asks for ECDL license before
  graduation

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Basic Knowledge to use ICT

• Case study shows the impact of non-basic ICT
  training
• Survey conducted on a group of post-graduate
  students in management
• all of them graduates of non-ICT faculties
• asked to answer by I know and I can explain to
  others, I may know or I do not know to 40
  basic words or syntagms related to ICT.
• terms common or used currently by the non-IT
  media or advertisers

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Basic Knowledge to use ICT Case Study
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Basic Knowledge to use ICT Case Study
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Basic Knowledge to use ICT Case Study
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Basic Knowledge to use ICT Case Study
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Basic Knowledge to use ICT Case Study

• Effort is still to be made
• to improve the ICT infrastructure in schools and
  universities
• to train the trainers
• The case study emphasizes the need to
• Generalize in all universities and high schools
  ICT curricula that bring next generation at an
  appropriate level to have all benefits of
  Information Society
• Renew ECDL and other general basic ICT skills
  curricula at short intervals

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Universities Expectations

• Universities need industry support as the
  infrastructure they possess is not easily kept
  up-to-dated
• The answer of the industry was positive and not
  only universities are sponsored with hardware,
  software, applications and know-how, but a
• New form of partnership emerged partnerships
  IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Alcatel and others.
• Overall good impact on the training of students
• produced a certain polarisation of ICT faculties,
  a few of them becoming
• Leaders with the best points in HR recruitment
• University Politechnica Bucharest for system
  support
• University of Iasi for application software
• Academy of Economic Sciences Bucharest for
  banking applications, ERP and data bases
• University Politechnica Timisoara for system
  applications.
• These universities are responsible for 40-50 of
  graduates each year.
• Within university environment there is still a
  reminiscence of the old concept of high level
  training for everybody
• Professors criticize the fact that good students
  are hired by companies during their 2-3rd grades
• neglect theoretical education and not any more
  motivated for a scientific career.
• New Bologna type scheme (323) does not produce
  the best results yet
• The first 3 years are filled with many courses
  repeating high school topics and student are not
  given the specialization skills required by the
  industry, with dissatisfaction on both sides.

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Curricula

• Universities claim to have adopted their
  curricula 75-100 to the requirements of the
  Bologna recommendations
• Most consider revisions to be made at the end of
  cycles (323)
• Others consider a revision every year
• Most important issue related to curricula is the
  industry demand which is not clearly defined
• large companies require narrow specialized
  graduates to produce immediately results,
• smaller companies and the IT departments in
  non-IT organizations want a broad specialization
  to solve a variety of task with the same person.
  
• It seems that this problem is not particular to
  Romania

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ATIC - A Bridge to Romania

• The Association for Information Technology and
  Communications of Romania (ATIC)
• organization aiming to consolidate an appropriate
  framework for the development of ITC in Romania
• maintains a database for co-operation projects
  available to members
• disseminates information to non-members
• Member of WITSA (World Information Technology
  Software Alliance) CEPIS (Council of European
  Professional Informatics Societies) and IT STAR
• http//www.atic.org.ro
• President Dr. Vasile Baltac
• Contact officeATIC_at_atic.org.ro

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Thank You!!QA?