Education for sustainable development (ESD) has presented long-lasting interest for researchers and policy makers. Despite a significant body of research, more in depth empirical studies are required for a better understanding of how sustainable development goals are applied in higher education and how sustainable behavior could be shaped via ESD. The need for this kind of research arises from, first, the scarceness of existing studies that explore economic and business higher education, and, second, the necessity to properly assess the connection between ESD principles and students’ behavior. Following this rationale, the present paper aims to provide an overview of how students’ sustainable behaviors are shaped via their perception of sustainable campus initiatives, teaching staff involvement and curricula. Statistical and econometric analysis applied on data collected via a survey on students from Bucharest University of Economic Studies (N = 1253) provides findings on the extent to which the awareness of sustainable development-specific issues acquired through education leads to sustainable behavior among students. According to the results, we argue that an increasing share of sustainable development topics combined with teaching staff involvement to raise awareness of sustainability issues are crucial to students’ sustainable behavior. However, on-campus actions are unlikely to change behavior unless they are optional rather than compulsory. Our findings ratify that, since education is one of the main drivers of sustainable development, there is an urgent need for coherence in shaping higher education according to sustainability issues.

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The current pandemic crisis, which is far from being over, has led to a significant paradigm shift in economics. In a turbulent environment in which the labor market has encountered a long series of changes generated by the processes of automation, robotization and digitalization, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that a workforce with digital skills can quickly adjust to new circumstances. Since novel issues, such as restrictions on internal movement and distorted supply chains, put major stress on the labor market, it seems that there is an urgent need for reshaping economies and following up-to-date technological trends. Moreover, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, a significant number of scholars and policymakers expressed their concerns about the volatility of employment and the weak ability of labor to adapt to new types of jobs. Within this framework, our paper aims to analyze the plausible impacts of digital efficiency on the future development of the labor market. Based upon the assumption that employment is facing ongoing challenges and the labor market is constantly being reshaped by technological trends, our study attempts to provide a pragmatic analysis of the effects of digital skills and the use of the Internet on salaries and wages in EU member states. Since, according to our results, the levels of salaries and wages are strongly correlated with digital proficiency and Internet usage, a consistent effort to increase the digital skills of individuals may be required to achieve a more effective and flexible labor market.

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