This study explores the offline and online communication skills of students in higher education. A total of 402 bachelor’s and master’s students from different study programs participated in the survey, such as education sciences, philology, communication sciences, and public relations. The evaluation was based on the scale of online and offline communication skills, which included four components: sociability, emotion decoding, self-disclosure, and assertiveness. The Mann–Whitney nonparametric statistical method was applied to examine the potential differences between the online and offline communication skills of students for the assessed variables of sociability, emotion detection, self-disclosure, and assertiveness. The statistical data analysis led to the following results: significantly higher online sociability; significantly higher online assertiveness; significantly higher offline emotion detection; significantly higher offline self-disclosure; bachelor’s students had significantly higher online skills than master’s students; and there were many differences between the various fields of specialization.

The factors influencing university dropout are varied, complex, and not easily identifiable. The aim of this study is to assess students’ perceptions of these dropout factors. A total of 36 students from “Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacău participated in the research, which included a focus group to identify the main factors contributing to dropout among students. The research results highlighted several important aspects related to university dropout, such as: the reasons behind choosing a particular faculty, how students manage doubts or concerns that arise during their studies, the categories of reasons (personal, family, relational, financial) which may lead to dropout, learning difficulties encountered during studies, and suggestions provided to peers considering dropping out as well as to university managers to help keep students motivated and ensure regular attendance. Understanding the factors contributing to university dropout is crucial for preventing and reducing this phenomenon within the academic environment.

The need to provide education for all has continued to be at a high level even now when access to education is easier and considerably wider than in the previous historical periods. There is a general causality as well as a specific one supporting this necessity. The latter includes an additional set of reasons which connect defining characteristics of disadvantaged learners with the limitations of the pandemic crisis and its effects on communication. They also continue to manifest themselves after the health restrictions have been lifted and further hinder communication and educational counselling, thereby imposing additional barriers to inclusive education. This study is a literature review through which we aim to make a synthesis of current communication and educational counselling new strategic approaches suitable for use in the post – COVID context for facilitating access to education for disadvantaged students. The objectives of the study are as follows: O1: to identify a set of strategies which correspond to the specific communication pattern and information needs of the children and teenagers nowadays; O2: to identify current educational counselling strategies which can be successfully used in the post - COVID context to enable well-informed career decisions for disadvantaged students; O3: to develop a formative intervention model for social inclusion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The study findings may be useful in school and career counselling in pre-university education, but also in collaborative approaches between pre-university and academia in order to facilitate the inclusion of the disadvantaged students.

Virtual environments allow teachers to approach the teaching process inclusively and creatively, to facilitate the effective transfer of learning and to support student learning with new technologies regardless of various barriers. The hereby study evaluates the students’ views concerning the virtual delivery of courses during their learning process taking into consideration their former face-to-face teaching-learning experience. It was based on the theoretical part which included typical aspects of online teaching and learning are presented and the most recent studies in this area are reviewed. Following previous research, we aim to develop an innovative model of successful online teaching and learning in higher education. A questionnaire-based research methodology was designed for 355 students at a university in the North-Eastern region of Romania. The questionnaire with closed-ended items was used for assessing students’ attitudes on the online teaching activity. The results indicate students’ preference for online courses, as well as a number of significant differences, depending on the study specialisation or form of education. Any future changes to online teaching and learning in universities should also take into account students’ and teachers’ views on this particular issue. Such an approach should allow us to see whether and how effective the use of virtual teaching environments can be for both students and teachers in higher education (HE).

Our study is rooted in a theoretical analysis of the concepts of personal self-efficacy and career choice, which are deeply interconnected. In response to the question, “What is the relationship between self-efficacy and career decision-making?” we have synthesised various insights from the literature with potential applications in career counselling within higher education. This study was conducted with a group of 377 students and focused on three hypotheses: H1 - we assume there are significant differences among participants regarding how general self-efficacy is influenced by the students’ level of education; H2: general self-efficacy positively predicts job searching self-efficacy; H3: career crafting positively predicts students’ self-efficacy in career searching. The results obtained, as well as the validation of the hypotheses based on these results, allow us to recommend that it is important to assess self-efficacy in career counselling activities and to initiate action plans aligned with the findings.

The aim of this study is to assess students’ ethical attitudes towards social networks (SNs) in order to identify ethical norms and principles, which should be implemented in universities. A self-reported survey was conducted on 583 Bachelor and Master students majoring in different domains in a Romanian university. The results revealed that students in higher education express an overall positive attitude towards the ethical use of SNs, taking seriously various ethical concerns such as the use of appropriate language, the selection of the content they share, and copywriting. Students also expressed a positive attitude towards the use of emoticons in their SNs communications. Significant differences were detected between different groups of students according to their gender, age, and specialization. The model of ethical attitudes provides a new perspective on how students and teachers know and respect the rules of using social networks in the academic environment.