The COVID-19 pandemic has left a mark on education as it had been known before. Beyond his, attention needs to be paid to the transition back to face-to-face learning and its implications. Within this context of change, the present research focuses on identifying the students’ preferred aspects of online education during the pandemic, namely learning, teaching, assessment, and interaction with peers and teachers, in order to improve face-to-face education by contextually adapting it to their needs. A survey was used on a representative sample of students from Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania, who were required to indicate their preferred form of education and the most beneficial one for their professional development. The results indicate the targeted students’ several preferences, such as teachers’ support with electronic educational resources, the use of online educational platforms to access resources and take tests, the easier and individualized communication with teachers, as well as peer connectivity in common projects. These findings identify practical suggestions that lead to a balance between face-to-face and digital education, probably under the form of blended learning, which could be considered by the main stakeholders in order to have a future sustainable education.

Aiming at shedding light on the implications the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the students’ social and personal lives, this study has focused on the verbal and non-verbal communication and on the surveyees’ personal lives during the pandemic as well as on the perspective of changing their communication behaviors after the pandemic. The 409 respondents, students at Politehnica University of Timisoara, took part in a survey, conducted between 1 April and 30 May 2021, that was posted on isondaje.ro, a Romanian online survey platform. The research has suggested the following results: the adjustment of the verbal communication by speaking in a more articulated manner or more loudly; the overuse of the upper part of the face to compensate for the concealed parts of the face due to face mask wearing; the analysis of the factors underlying the respondents’ actions, i.e., relational attitudes, various greeting forms, various non-verbal reactions, which are aspects that are likely to change even after the pandemic. The results have also presented the changes that interpersonal communication could go through under the pressure of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, but also the ways through which people try to protect their most valuable asset, i.e., communication, which defines humanity and makes us unique as human beings.

This paper aims to diagnose Romanian engineering students in relation to their migration intentions, motivations, and destinations, and to predict the magnitude of migration in the polled population. It presents the results of a quantitative study based on a questionnaire survey consistent in terms of number and structure of variables and responses. The online questionnaire was self-administered by 1782 students from the five major technical Romanian universities, which are the main providers of the highly skilled labor force in the area of engineering. Regression analysis was carried out to correlate the drivers of migration and the potential for real migration. According to the results, Romanian students from technical universities are inclined to migrate in a significant proportion; the economic factor being the main migration driver. The predictive model built on the logistical regression and the collected data accounts only partially for the variations of the variable decision to migrate, so further research is needed. The analysis of the students’ mindset can prove useful to understand the future interactions between the new graduates and the labor market, to develop regional and national policies regarding human capital, and to root development plans towards sustainable economic growth in solid databases concerning the engineering profession.

Climate awareness is a major topic of concern, and the Green Deal in Europe attempts to turn states, communities, and local actors towards more environmentally conscious action to reduce, by 2030, the net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55%. Universities voluntarily adhered to the 2030 Agenda, displaying a wide variety of approaches to respond to sustainability goals and calls for greening. The purpose of the present study is to establish the students’ readiness for action as sustainability promoters, starting with their awareness of environmental issues. Upon focusing on the perceptions of students from the oldest university in western Romania gathered via an online questionnaire in 2023, the research showed that 95.6% of respondents consider climate issues as important or very important to them, even though less than 50% of the sample evaluate their own knowledge of environmental protection as good or very good. The results show that of the parameters that differentiate student awareness and actions, gender and place of residence (on campus/off campus) play a significant role, helping shape tailored strategies and projects to capitalize on students’ predispositions to engage (or not) in environment-related activities.

The response of most educational institutions to the health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic was the adoption of emergency remote teaching and assessment. The paper aims to evaluate students’ satisfaction with assessment activities in a Romanian university and to identify elements pertaining to sustainable assessment in the post-pandemic period. A collaborative research strategy was developed with students being invited as co-researchers for data collection by distributing an online questionnaire and for interpretation of the results in a focus group. The factor analysis of the responses to the survey extracted two pillars pertaining to students’ appraisal of remote assessment activities: Knowledge, and leisure and stress. The discussion in the focus group showed that the research helped participants to process and reason their experience with remote assessment activities in the summer of 2020. Students missed their academic rituals and interactions with peers and teachers. Despite their enthusiasm for technological innovation and the benefits brought by computer assisted assessment, students are inclined towards preserving human evaluators, preferably from their familiar teachers, in educational settings resembling pre-pandemic academic life. A sustainable, resilient model of education needs to be based on retaining features identified as acceptable by students as examinees.

A major issue recurrent in sustainability ensuring concerns is pollution due to human activities, mainly related to the reduction in waste generation. The present study aims to identify students’ awareness of waste management, their daily routines in separately collecting recyclable waste, and their behaviors leading to reducing wasteful consumption in campus residential living, in a large university in the Western part of Romania, to channel the strategic plan of the university and the efforts of institutional teams dealing with the issues of waste management and sustainability. The methodology consists of an analysis of waste management in the university campus hosting around 6000 students in 16 dormitories, and of an anonymous online survey mapping the self-perceived behavior of students in solid waste management. Data from 1172 valid responses are refined through factorial analysis. While recycling behavior seems to be largely shared by the respondents, with more than 50% declaring that they always reuse recyclables, separate collection of waste is typical for only a quarter of the sample. Therefore, a vigorous intervention is needed to guide young adults’ behavior towards sustainability choices. Campus greening needs to join interventions from the university, in charge of campus life in the selected case, city administration, waste management companies, and the student body. The findings are useful to explore the possible directions for action to increase or contribute to territorial sustainability in the socio-ecological context of Timisoara, the largest university city in the western part of Romania through educational, managerial, and policy interventions, based on local partnerships and collaborations, in accordance with SDG 17.