The begginig of the academic year

On October 1st, a new academic year began for more than 600 000 Romanian students.About 480 000 of them attend state universities, while the rest go to private colleges. As was the case with the school year last month, the beginning of the academic year sees discontent staff and students, while the Education Ministry seems optimistic.

In a interview on the public radio, Education minister Daniel Funeriu said that several measures had been taken to increase the quality and credibility of the Romanian academic system. Staff will exclusively be selected according to professional competence and university assessment criteria will be stricter. The Education minister also enlarged on the problems he is facing.


‘’Our valuable young people will never return to Romania as long as the academic sector here is fraught with academic nepotism, promotion according to non-professional criteria and conflicts of interest between people who hold both university managerial positions and political offices. There are too many professors who publish books and compel students to buy them in order to pass exams. Too many such cases, along with cases of graduation theses that students buy on the internet, plagiarized PhD theses and promoting professors according to criteria that steer away from quality’’ said Daniel Funeriu.

Academic staff is unhappy with the salaries

For education trade unions, the academic year has kicked off in the worst circumstances of the last two decades. Protest rallies are slated for October 5th in universities across the country. Staff is mainly unhappy with their salaries.

"All we had gained through negotiations has pretty much gone to the dogs. Our salaries were reduced 25% on July 1st and the new single payment law provides for a further 15% salary cut, so people are totally desperate" said the honorary president of the Alma Mater Academic Trade Union Federation, Razvan Bobulescu said.

Students say that their problems remain the same, like every year.

"There is a big shortage of campus accommodation, unchanged scholarships, which we find quite low, and no sign from the minister. He completely ignores us" said Ionut Poenaru, the president of the National Students’ Union in Romania.

(Radio România Internaţional, Serviciul în limba engleză).