ANALYSIS OF GEOGRAPHIC ORIGIN OF ENGINEERING STUDENTS AND THEIR CULTURAL AND ADAPTATION ISSUES AT LUCIAN BLAGA UNIVERSITY IN SIBIU

Sibiu is a city located in the center of Romania, which presents a developed industrial area in the immediate vicinity. At present, there is a continuing tendency of many of these companies to extend. This leads to an increasing demand of engineers on the labor market.

The problem is that the Sibiu, with a population of approximately 170000 ranks 14th in the Romania in terms of the number of inhabitants, which implies an insufficient number of high school graduates, potential engineers, compared to the demand on the labor market.

This paper aims to present a study by which to determine and analyze from what other counties of the country come the students of the engineering faculty of Sibiu, specifically to study programmes of the Machine and Industrial Equipment Department. The paper will also study the evolution of the number of candidates coming from Sibiu area in the last years. Some cultural and adaptation problems of the students coming from different areas of the country and ways to overcome them will be also presented. Even the number of the international students is rather small, and only in the framework exchange programs, the evolution of their number and their specific problems during their study in Sibiu will be also presented.

The goal of the paper is to develop a new strategy to promote the specializations of the Machine and Industrial Equipment Department of the Engineering Faculty based on the results obtained by the above-mentioned study.