University to offer studies in Industry 4.0
Greece is acquiring an undergraduate department related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which will deal, among other things, with big data and drones.
The Department of Digital Industry Technologies will be operated by the University of Athens. Although the Greek market is in need of IT experts, there aren’t many university departments that provide appropriate courses.
A total of 200,000 jobs will be created, 50,000 of which will be tied to the digital transformation, as the Recovery Fund will concentrate on the digital transformation of services in the nation through its funding.
The new department will focus on technologies related to the more general field of information and telecommunications, with a focus on automation (robotics, automatic control, cyber-physical systems, 3D printing, drones), data management and analysis (big data, industrial internet of things), information systems interconnection (broadband networks, cloud computing), and techno-economic analysis combined with management.
In this way it will contribute important thematic specializations which are part of a national strategy for the digital transformation of Greek industry, such as the smart factory, the interconnected supply network, the digitized health ecosystem, the retail sector, the digital customer experience, 5G networks, digital skills needs, the digital transformation of public administration etc.
The department is based at the Evripos Complex of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens in Psachna on the island of Evia.
It is being established at a time when universities need to increase the number of departments dealing with information technology, even though the distribution of the subjects of study in the departments of universities reflects the sectors of the economy in which Greece has been focusing over the last four decades.
According to the National Authority for Higher Education, in the academic year 2020-21, higher academic institutes had 794,107 students. Of these, 20.97% were studying engineering and 20.66% were studying economics or law. The information technology sector (3.42%) and the services sector (2.9%) were in the last places.
