Recently, the on-going media circus that grips public life in Romania stumbled upon a new subject: the University of Spiru Haret and its illegality. A few short weeks ago, the recently enointed minister of Education and Research, former rector of the Bucharest Politechnic University, saw fit to suspend the rights of the private university to issue diplomas. The decision affected a number of departments, which had their legal rights pulled, because of claims of non-concordance with the legal norms. The core of the problem resides, as always, in the intepretation of laws, which were inadequate in the first place. Moreover, the high level of inner production of professoral titles, acknowledged only by the university itself was also incriminated by the authorithies. The shady affairs of the Spiru Haret private university, were meant to be exposed to public criticism by this bold clampdown upon its rigths. The action, unfortunately for its authors, backfired, and a huge amount of criticism against was directed against the measure. Many voices asked, no less, for the minister’s resignation, for attacking “the autonomy of universities” in general, and for the blundered manner in which this measure was carried through, in particular. In the following essay, I shall attempt to critically examine the origins and conclusions of the measure to outlaw this university.
Let me start off by stating that I am in no way unbiased in my wiev towards the Social Democratic party; people who know me also know I sought to combat its actions on many occasions. I hold no particular sympathy for mrs. Andronescu, either ( I was one of her lab rat Bacalaureat 12th graders back in 2003). But in this case I cannot condone the hipocritycal criticism of this measure. Firstly, let’s examine Spiru Haret university, and private universities in general in Romania. Their status in many cases shady and uncertain, they reared their heads in the Early 90′s, with the vanguard being lead by Spiru Haret University and the Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University. Lead by men such as rector Aurelian Bondrea, and others, they sported a faculty of specialists belonging more to the era of Ceausescu than to post 90′s Romania. A novel fact for the market of higher education in Romania, they offered admission conditioned only by one being able to afford the tuition, as opposed to state-funded institutions, which required a more-or-less strict admissions exams (at least they did back in my day). This alone questions the dubios nature of persons graduating from such an institution, for their skills are never truly tested from the outset. But let us not judge right from the word go.
Another fact is the low level of education that these universities and their various departments offer. It is a well-known fact that diplomas gained from them are not on par with the ones handed out by the state universities, many of which, especially nowadays, are notoriously out of thouch with the latest developments in their respective fields ( especially those in humanities, while mathemathics and informatics seem to be the last fortress of quality Romanian scholars). One can then ask oneself: how can these institutions formally issue diplomas which should be equivalent to those obtained in the state-funded system? To put it simply, they cannot.
The private universities, with Spiru Haret being the most conspicuous, sport staggering enrollment rates and students, numbering in the millions in the present. Spiru Haret alone, reportedly has around three hundred thousand. This, combined with the upwardly mentioned low quality of studies offered, leads to a dangerous dillution of the level of higher education in the country. The competitivity of people wanting to acceed to the status of student is low, since options are plentiful ( at first glance). This gives very little motivation for the state universities to perform as well, since they are seeing admission rates decline each year. Let us take, for example, the field which the staff of our blog is engaged in: History and International Studies. The top three state universities all have such a department, with student numbers swollen ( due to the desire to compete with the numerous other universities) to around 300 in a year. The top ten largest private universities each have such a department, with more or less the same numbers. That gives us a number of roughly three to four thousand graduates each year, that have a training in history. Does Romania need three thousand historians yearly, especially when the number of full teaching positions in a metropolis such as Bucharest in the field is 2 (two), yearly? The level of overproduction of intellectuals in inadequate fields has reached staggering rates.
Getting back to the qualitative side of the matter, the lack of an adequate regulatory system from the side of the authorities is also conspicuous. The scandal has shed full light on precisely this element. Andronescu’s bold move is therefore salutary, if backed up by a move in the legal sphere as well, with the case of Spiru Haret serving as an all-important precedent. Don’t get me wrong: I am not opposed to the idea of alternative insitutions of higher education to the state ones. I am currently enrolled in one myself. But their functioning should be governed by strict norms, to serve as bulwarks of quality. The autonomy of universities has become a cloak behind which many irregularities are masked, and its instrumentalization by corrupt rectors must come to and end. A system of scholarships must be set up. And so forth. The conclusion is that I do not feel that the measure of the minister, however bungled and badly planned, is wrong in its inner core. Though to swallow for some is the very fact that they do not qualify for the status of students. This status should again become on of intellectual prestige and priviledge, not the mediocre social cathegory which it has become nowadays. The Ministry of Education must act thoughly at first, to enforce legal measures; though it might hurt some, the country’s level of education will be better off in the long run.
