Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview on the measures taken by the Romanian Ministry of Education for the digitalization of the undergraduate education system in the postcommunist period. The research will divide the 32-year period in two major milestones: the prepandemic phase (1990-2020) and the period that followed the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022). This paper relies on a case study on the projects proposed and implemented both by the Romanian authorities and the private initiatives to perform the integration of technology in the educational act and the development of the digital skills among the Romanian pupils. After the analysis, it was discovered that digitalization has been, over the years, a priority for Romanian government, but, even if several projects have been implemented and a considerable amount of funds has been allocated to education, the effort has not been sustained. So, once the pandemic started and the whole educational act had to move from a  faceto-face approach with technology insertions to a complete online approach, the system was completely unprepared. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by condensing the digitalization initiatives that have been proposed for the Romanian undergraduate education system and presenting the authorities’ attitude towards introducing technology into the educational act as a permanent resource for developing relevant skills for integration into labor market.