Providing the ICT sector with qualified specialists through workforce training and development continues to be one of the priorities of the National Association of ICT Companies (ATIC). In order to know how prepared the universities in the country are and what is the current state of educational resources in terms of IT specialties, dedicated programs, tech projects, activities and research laboratories, the “Feasibility Study of the Modernization of University Education in the ICT Field of Republic of Moldova”. In a dedicated event, the collected information was presented to the general public, and the best ideas are to be implemented in the following academic year. The document was developed within the TEKWILL project, implemented by the National Association of ICT Companies (ATIC), with the financial support of external development partners – USAID and Sweden.

Rectors, deans, heads of departments, university professors and representatives of the private sector in the IT field participated in the event, offering recommendations for initiatives to develop the university curriculum and ways to support the research field. Also, during the discussions, emphasis was also placed on the strategies that educational institutions can develop and implement to successfully go through the digital transformation process.

Irina Oriol, deputy coordinator, Tekwill: “We set out to discuss strategies, visions and new initiatives for the modernization of university studies in the field of information technologies, so that young people have the opportunity to choose what to study and get new experiences. In order to achieve the proposed, we want to offer the possibility to specialists from the private sector and university professors to explore the development trends of the IT industry at the national and international level, to expose themselves and come with expertise, to contribute to the adaptation and modernization of digital laboratories in universities, in line with market requirements.”

According to the document, the main challenges in digitizing and modernizing the university curriculum are:

• The development of universities that provide advanced teaching and practice or that carry out research and product development projects lags behind the needs of the country’s economy and the ICT sector;
• The most important microelectronics laboratories in Moldova have inventions and patents, university researchers have hundreds of publications in national and international journals, but in the last five years there are no examples of commercialization of inventions produced in the country;
• A good part of the teachers who teach IT specialties do not have enough experience of interacting with technologies in the real world;
• Lack of financial resources to support the research and development activities of universities and university laboratories;
• ICT companies oriented to the local market need specialists who know programs such as: 1C, Bitix24, Terrasoft, MS Dynamics365, and universities do not offer this type of advanced educational training;
• The gap between the needs of ICT companies and the national economy in the country and the research and development activities and projects carried out in universities.

The participants analyzed recommendations and various proposals for improving and adapting the university curriculum. These include: the implementation of hardware and software solutions in university laboratories, which will encourage research and technology development activities among both students and teachers. Also, several additional initiatives to the study program will be able to complement the university curriculum in order to develop tomorrow’s specialists soft skills such as: entrepreneurship, creativity, problem solving ability. And to be effective in the long term, university R&D labs should become a product development ground for more startups