BookPDF Available

Higher Education Reforms in Romania: Between the Bologna Process and National Challenges

Authors:

Abstract

Romania is an active player in various international higher education areas, while undergoing a series of higher education reforms within its national framework. The Higher Education Evidence Based Policy Making: a necessary premise for progress in Romania project was implemented by the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) in the timeframe February 2012 - February 2014, being co-financed by the European Social Fund through the Operational Programme "Administrative Capacity Development". The project aimed to increase the capacity of public administration for evidence-based policy making in the field of higher education, while focusing on good practices at international level and impact assessment. With the contribution of the national and international experts, the project has generated a number of analysis and studies on the existing higher education public policies (quality assurance, internationalisation, equity, data collection, the Bologna Process, financing of higher education). Based on the results of the project, the book will reunite a number of policy research articles which would tap into the innovative aspects of the project's activities and provide a concise overview of what good practices can be drawn from the empirical research conducted in this project. The book will therefore aim to improve the information on Romanian higher education reforms, as well as on the concrete evidence-based policy proposals which could be transformed into future policy solutions in the Romanian higher education system. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
Book 2015
Open Access
Higher Education Reforms in Romania
Between the Bologna Process and National Challenges
Editors:
Adrian Curaj ,
Ligia Deca ,
Eva Egron-Polak ,
Jamil Salmi
ISBN: 978-3-319-08053-6 (Print) 978-3-319-08054-3 (Online)
Open Access link
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/72/bok%253A978-3-319-08054-3.pdf?originUrl=http%3A
%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Fbook%2F10.1007%2F978-3-319-08054-
3&token2=exp=1469986160~acl=%2Fstatic%2Fpdf%2F72%2Fbok%25253A978-3-319-08054-
3.pdf%3ForiginUrl%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flink.springer.com%252Fbook
%252F10.1007%252F978-3-319-08054-
3*~hmac=ebf2e1a8269a5c191667b197d0b2cf594f0f7394b60a169d3641f6d99911b8d7

Chapters (11)

Romanian higher education has undergone a series of transformations in a short timespan (2009–2013), fuelled by a series of public debates and preparatory projects. The adoption of the most recent Law on Education (Law 1/2011) is a milestone in this regard. The present article aims at capturing some recent configurations of the Romanian higher education system, while making the links with its positioning within the larger European and global environments. The role of international processes and their influence on Romanian higher education policy debates are described, in an attempt to provide the background against which the articles included in the present volume can be read in a contextualised manner. Continuity and innovation, policy initiatives and impact assessment through research and data collection are all weaved together in the fabric of the higher education sector, in which one can always find some seeds of the future Romanian society. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
In this article we set to analyze the policy measures that have been initiated and experimented in the Romanian higher education sector in order to reduce the information asymmetry between the education providers and the rest of stakeholders. The need for higher education policies is triggered by the public nature of the education and also by the information disparities and gaps that are inherent given the long-term investment character of the services provided. In this context, there are several transparency tools available, ranging from state intervention to sector self-regulation. The article assesses the potential ex-ante impact of different policy options and of the implementation of U-Multirank in Romania in particular and argues that sector self-regulation through voluntary participation in U-Multirank complemented by the development of a benchmarking system would be the most feasible policy option for enhancing the transparency and social responsibility of higher education institutions in Romania. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
Despite legal provisions in place since 2005, Romanian universities are considered to perform internal quality assurance only at a formal level, on paper, and usually in anticipation of external evaluations demanded by the government or other official institutions. This paper posits five hypotheses to explain this situation. We analyze 187 interviews with people in universities in order to evaluate these hypotheses. Only two hypotheses are confirmed by the data, allowing us to construct a narrative of policy failure. First, there are top-down failures resulting from unclear and inconsistent legal provisions that focus on multilayered evaluation procedures. Second, there are bottom-up failures related to the lack of ownership over internal quality assurance systems by the actors in the universities. The existing procedures are often seen as control-tools of government, and understood as disconnected from the universities’ own goals and problems. Consequently, people on the ground passively try to subvert these tools by carrying them out in a ritualistic manner—which is why quality assurance cannot become internalized. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
Since 1989, Romania has gone through over two decades of higher education reforms. While the student population had one of the biggest increases in Europe, from 192.810 students in 1990/1991 to 907.353 students in 2008/2009, it had dropped drastically to 464.592 students by 2012. If the situation has improved in terms of access of a higher number of students to higher education, compared with 1990, higher education continues to favour the wealthiest segments of the population. Even though Romania has several commitments at the European level regarding equity in higher education (Bologna Process, Europe 2020 Strategy), the data show low participation rates for students from disadvantaged groups such as rural students, students from low-income families, disabled students or Roma students. Learning from the national policies which did not translate into institutional realities, the article tries to establish how Romania’s commitments regarding equity in higher education within the Bologna Process are framed into national policies and how higher education institutions understand the concept of “equity” in terms of implementing the national policies or developing their own, with an emphasis on access and participation in higher education. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
The aim of this paper is to present a logical framework for evaluation capacity building in higher education agencies, which can be used as an instrument both for grounding future educational policies, and for improving the policies’ implementation process. The logical framework will focus on four main stages that will examine the link between organizational evaluation capacity building and the process of organizational learning. Thus, we discuss the way in which evaluation practice is becoming a routine at the micro level (within the organization) through expert team learning and organizational learning processes and diffuses at macro level (within the system) through system learning and interactions at the system level. These learning processes facilitate the development of institutional characteristics such as evaluation capacity, policy implementation and leadership. The organizational learning process is seen as being founded on a cyclic model of shaping evaluation priorities and developing evaluation structures, selecting evaluation models, training evaluation skills, transforming evaluation into routine and reshaping evaluation priorities once again. To this end, several uses of evaluation practice in the Romanian higher education system are analysed. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
From an educational policy perspective, student centred learning (SCL) is a rather new concept. It has emerged in recent years in national and institutional policy documents, often as part of rather declarative and formal approaches. Such policies are frequently lacking a clearly articulated definition of the concept and its effective operationalization. SCL is a new concept in Romania as well, and its adoption has not been free of difficulties. It is due to the influence of the Bologna Process that SCL is currently becoming an integral part of the strategic framework of universities. The article analyses the understanding of the SCL concept from the perspective of Romanian universities, as well as the extent to which it has been internalized within their processes and practices. The article looks at SCL from two different perspectives: curriculum development (in terms of using learning outcomes and the ECTS) and teaching (in terms of pedagogy and quality assurance). At the same time, the analysis specifically tracks Romania’s commitments regarding SCL within the Bologna Process, and in the broader national higher education policy context. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
Internationalisation of higher education is high on the agenda of most universities in the European Union, European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and beyond. Romanian universities are increasingly focusing on developing institutional internationalisation strategies in which they aim for both quality enhancement through mainstreaming international elements in curricula and diversifying their academic communities (with incoming and outgoing students and staff). The article maps policies and practices regarding internationalisation of education in the Romanian higher education at the national policy level, but also offers a few perspectives from the institutional level. Several institutional case studies were comparatively analysed, from the point of view of perceptions on internationalisation and institutional behaviour, while taking into consideration the European and global context. The data used for the article was collected within the frame of a project implemented by the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) and funded through the European Social Fund, titled: ‘Higher Education Evidence Based Policy Making: a necessary premise for progress in Romania’. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
In this article we investigate both the evolution and the current state of the public policies regarding student subsidies in post-communist Romania. We look into how the criteria on which student subsidies are distributed reflect an “equity” or a “quality” approach. This normative perspective is completed with a statistical account of the categories of students who appropriate student subsidies. We argue that quality was the staple criterion for the distribution of student subsidies over the past decade and that the present arrangements have significant shortcomings from both an “equity” and a “quality” perspective. We conclude that the current context is favourable for a shift towards a more balanced relation between quality and equity, due to the expansion of the support schemes and the distribution of student subsidies to more numerous and heterogeneous categories of students. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
The article investigates the evolution of quality constraints for higher education institutions in Romania using the framework of principal-agent theory. Two related subjects are broadly covered: one is the evolution of the quality constraints themselves (in terms of accreditation and quality assessment mechanisms); the other is the incorporation of quality components in the actual allocation of funds to public universities. Throughout the article elements of student equity and access which operate within the framework of quality evaluation are highlighted and the impact of this framework on the funding process is assessed. It is found that general quality considerations play an increasingly important role in the funding of public universities but that equity and access elements have a limited role within quality evaluation. Nonetheless, in addition to their indirect impact mediated by quality assessment, such elements have recently also taken a more articulated form within the funding mechanism itself. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
This chapter develops a framework of literature focused on the evolution of internationalisation of higher education. One of the deepest forms of internationalisation is a process approach, in which institutions engage in a comprehensive strategy of integrating international perspectives into all aspects of teaching and learning (de Wit 2002; Knight 1999). It is now also referred to as comprehensive internationalisation. Against this framework, the chapter explores some of the implications of international developments on the varying institutional practices of internationalisation in Romania. We focus on two key dimensions of internationalisation of higher education: the importance of the European context and the call for more comprehensive strategies for internationalisation. Related issues are the focus on internationalisation abroad and the lack of strategies to enhance internationalisation at home. Although mobility is a significant mechanism for the further development of internationalisation, we argue that mobility alone is not likely to lead to the development of global competence and mind-set for the majority of students in Romania, nor assist its universities in developing more comprehensive internationalisation strategies. For this analysis we draw on select findings from the ‘Higher Education Evidence based Policy Making: a necessary premise for progress in Romania’ project. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
National strategies and practices in internationalisation of higher education vary across countries. So does their efficiency and impact. For countries that, like Romania, are considering adopting a national internationalisation strategy and are deliberating what exact model to choose (or develop), valuable lessons can be learned from a well-calibrated cross-country comparison. The present study was invited by the Romanian Executive Agency for Funding of Higher Education, Innovation and Development specifically for this purpose. The study is based on a comparative analysis of four European countries: Estonia, Germany, Poland, and Romania. It focuses on aspects such as: existence or not of a national strategy; content of strategies, where they exist, from principles and priorities to legal provisions and budgets; main internationalisation practices, whether linked to a formal strategy or not; main actors at national level; student mobility data. The comparison provides concrete elements for a possible framework informing the choices of the relevant stakeholders/policy makers in Romania. At the same time, it provides surprising insight that may be of interest for policy makers and higher education actors in other countries, as well as for scholars of internationalisation, for example by outlining policy approaches and “country profiles” with regard to internationalisation. © 2015, Springer International Publishing. All rights resereved.
... La internacionalización de la educación superior, desde una perspectiva institucional, sectorial y nacional, se define como el proceso de integración de las dimensiones globales, interculturales e internacionales en los objetivos, funciones y desarrollo de ofertas y servicios de la educación superior (Knight 2004;2016). A partir de esta definicióndominante en las últimas décadas-se han documentado las experiencias entre las universidades de diferentes regiones del mundo, cada una con resultado diversos (Adel et al., 2018;Bilsland et al., 2020;Bykova et al., s. f.;Cai, 2019;Curaj et al., 2015;Guimarães et al., 2020;Zuzeviciute et al., 2017). ...
Technical Report
Full-text available
APPIES II es una continuación del primer reporte de políticas públicas de Internacionalización de la Educación Superior en América Latina (2022) donde se presentaron Brasil, Chile, Colombia, México y Perú. En este segundo reporte (2024) se presentan Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica y Nicaragua; así como el Consejo Superior Universitario Centroamericano (CSUCA) con una detallada explicación acerca de las políticas en torno a la internacionalización de sus instituciones de educación superior. Nicaragua presenta al Consejo Nacional de Universidades (CNU) y Costa Rica al Consejo Nacional de Rectores (CONARE). ISBN 978-99922-46-15-3
... In ensuring global competitiveness and quality assurance of many educational institutions, the internationalization of higher education has been widely promoted. Internationalization can be understood in two specific processes: 1) the transnational contract between students and teachers, researchers, universities, and states that can be represented in the mobility initiated to engage in international activities that offer new experiences and diverse insights; and 2) the ability to obtain educational facts, systems of higher quality, and standardization of capabilities (Curaj et al., 2015;de Wit, 2020;Garson, 2016). Furthermore, this process involves incorporating intercultural, global, and international elements into the institution's purposes and traits, research agenda, and transfer of quality learning (Aerden, 2015). ...
Article
Full-text available
Across the globe, internationalization has influenced the emphasis of educational institutions on international engagement and standardization aligned with global competencies. As Philippine higher education also aimed for internationalization, many universities were tasked to enhance their quality assurance framework by ensuring sound graduate mobility and strong international linkages. With these changes in education, this current study tried to identify existing internationalization practices and their perceived impact in three selected autonomous universities in the country. This study determined how these practices generated an educational paradigm shift toward a culture of quality through internationalization. Employing a qualitative-descriptive approach, structured online interviews were conducted with selected participants (n=14) closely associated with internationalization policies and initiatives in their respective universities. Based on a thematic analysis, the participants identified strategies involving incentivizing and strengthening of international linkages as effective practices for internationalization. Additionally, participants explained how these practices not only enhanced their skills but also enabled them to have international recognition. The findings provided grounding and insights on how to achieve a culture of quality through internationalization.
... As a member of the European Union, the Romanian Higher Education system is aligned with the European Higher Education Area, the Bologna Agreement (Curaj et al., 2015), and the national policies concerning education and digitalization are directed by the EU level decisions (Goldbach and Hamza-Lup, 2017). In this context, digital inclusion has been one of the main priorities on the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research agenda and several major educational programs were centered around developing the ICT infrastructure and internet connection for Romanian education institutions. ...
Article
Full-text available
The Covid-19 pandemic is the most disturbing event in the lifetime of most of our planet’s citizens. The lockdown measures directly impacted many areas of our lives, including the educational sector, because locking down countries meant implicitly locking down the educational system. Moreover, what was first considered a temporary solution for an extraordinary situation began to look more and more like a medium to long-term general rule. Nevertheless, the questions are: are we all ready to move the entire educational process online and fully understand the challenges and implications for all stakeholders involved? This two-part research aims to provide some answers to these questions by identifying and analyzing the perceptions of Romanian engineering students enrolled at “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi (TUIASI) regarding the changes registered in the past year once the emergency e-learning situation started. The first part of the research was conducted between April and May 2020 through an online survey among 134 engineering students. It aimed at identifying the students’ perception of the online learning systems provided by their university, considering the significant speed with which changes were imposed. In addition, this research phase focused on students’ access to resources and knowledge to use and integrate online learning into their study routine. The second part of the research was carried out after almost a year of e-learning between March and April 2021 and consisted of six online focus groups with 36 students and aimed at identifying the main advantages and challenges students experience throughout the online educational process. The research revealed that although students are digital natives, they still have difficulties harnessing e-learning’s advantages and integrating them into their study routine. Another significant aspect refers to the changing role of the professor perceived not only as an instructor but as a mentor during a time of crisis. The study results can offer higher education institutions insight and valuable information that can be used in designing and implementing online and hybrid activities and classes that better fit the students’ needs and expectations in terms of e-learning.
Article
Full-text available
We investigated whether there are differences in women’s progress in Romanian accounting academia between the communist and post-communist periods, and compared to the international context; and whether the legal framework in Romania influenced women’s accounting careers in academia. For the communist period, we found that for our topic training for the exercise of the profession, the evolution of women’s academics, although it did not exceed that of men, outperformed that of women in other contexts, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries. Then, our findings were similar to the international context for teaching and leadership in academia. For the post-communist period, we observed Romanian academics’ similitude in teaching and bachelor studies and superiority in scientific publications and doctoral studies compared to their international counterparts. Also, the complexity of provisions assuring general or women’s rights, as well as the pace of their issuance aligned with women’s experiences in accounting academia.
Article
This study aims to evaluate the online measurement and evaluation course in teacher training programs during the COVID-19 process. In the study, we sought answers to two primary research questions: What are the opinions of teachers and school administrators regarding their measurement and evaluation competencies? Does the online "measurement and evaluation" course have the qualities of an effective program in the "antecedents, transactions, and outcomes" dimension? We structured the research into two phases within a multistage evaluation design framework. The findings show that there were problems and positive aspects in all dimensions of the program. For example, adapting teacher training programs developed before COVID-19 to distance education processes was challenging. In distance education, some practices contradict the modern teaching and assessment approach. Such problems were reflected in teachers' acquisition of measurement and evaluation competencies. The achievement test we applied to the observed groups also confirmed these findings. For this reason, responsible organizations should not ignore the fact that we cannot renounce distance education. During program development, they should reconsider how the teachers will acquire measurement and evaluation competencies and how we will measure and evaluate in distance education.
Article
Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of research engagement and productivity of academics, particularly those from developing country contexts that are currently not well-represented in the literature. Thirty-seven Romanian public universities grouped into three categories: research-intensive, teaching and research, and teaching, were analyzed using canonical multivariate methods based on their institutional and bibliometric data for a period spanning between 2012 and 2020. We found that the most important predictor for research productivity is the university category, associated with prestige. The institutional public budget has no significant impact on faculty research productivity; the amount and the impact of research are related to who is financed and not how much money from institutional financing is received. The teaching workload has a negative influence on research results, while the PhD students, analyzed separately, proved to be a significant predictor of all the scientific output indicators when considered as an absolute number. During the study period, there was a significant shift in the publication output from quantity (number of articles) towards quality—articles in highly cited journals, and this trend accelerated in the last two years. The process of universities' classification using research output is verified and tested, proving that it is an ongoing, highly variable process with continuously shifting demands. Although our research findings are specific to the Romanian context, many of them may contribute to a better understanding of the institutional drivers of research productivity and can be replicated in other contexts.
Article
Full-text available
In modern times, English has become the lingua franca of science, dominating journal publishing ecologies. Multilingual journals keep up the flag, many researchers arguing that, especially in the case of social sciences and humanities, diversity of languages is an asset. In Romania, in the absence of national databases or repositories, the first task to understand linguistic preferences for scientific communication is to map the ground. The study extracted information on Romanian communication sciences journals from four major databases. Out of the 22 identified journals, only eight are dedicated solely to communication sciences, grouped in two poles of communication sciences schools, where doctoral studies in the field have been established. While English dominates the publication world, multilinguistic journals also appear, prevailing in traditional multicultural regions such as Transylvania–Banat. The future of multilingual journals depends on, among other factors, the capacity of the European Union to promote linguistic diversity for scientific purposes. Meanwhile, Romanian journals in communication sciences work towards increasing their impact. Research findings have practical and policy implications, the core idea being that Romanian editors need to strive for better standards in publication and showcase the journals better on the journal’s webpage.
Chapter
For several decades, higher education systems have undergone continuous waves of reform, driven by a combination of concerns about the changing labour needs of the economy, competition within the global-knowledge economy, and nationally competitive positioning strategies to enhance the performance of higher education systems. Yet, despite far-ranging international pressures, including the emergence of an international higher education market, enormous growth in cross-border student mobility, and pressures to achieve universities of world class standing, boost research productivity and impact, and compete in global league tables, the suites of policy, policy designs and sector outcomes continue to be marked as much by hybridity as they are of similarity or convergence. This volume explores these complex governance outcomes from a theoretical and empirical comparative perspective, addressing those vectors precipitating change in the modalities and instruments of governance, and how they interface at the systemic and institutional levels, and across geographic regions.
Chapter
Full-text available
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the state of Open Education and Open Educational Resources policies and initiatives in Romania. This assessment examines the development and the environment of the policies, the opportunities and barriers of policy development, the role and the capacity of key and potential actors in this space. Likewise, there are highlighted initiatives and projects at national and local level and their impact, stressing that embedding Open Educational Resources in education increases both the efficiency and fairness of education and training. Finally, the paper provides a set of recommendations in order to facilitate the openness of education in the country, aiming to enable stakeholders to make more informed strategic decisions to promote Open Educational Resources and Massive Open Online Courses integration in all forms of education. The recommendations are organized on three levels: teachers, institutions, and policy-makers.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.