The money for Education must be increasing, but correlated with increasing quality and adapting to economic reality, so that the allocated funds are a real investment, not just a simple expense, declared on Monday the interim Minister of Education, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, during the debate on the simple motion submitted to the Senate - "Education between failure and abandonment. How students are transformed into budgetary collateral".
"Higher education depends on the pre-university base. The quality of university results is directly linked to the quality of this base. Therefore, public policies in Education must be thought of as a whole: from literacy and basic skills to university excellence. Yes, there must be more and more money for Education, but correlated with increasing quality and adaptation to economic reality. So that the money allocated is a real investment, the most important, not just a simple expense," said Ilie Bolojan.
According to him, university education means much more: quality, skills, real chances on the labor market, research and innovation, direct contribution to Romania's development.
"These should be at the center of a complete debate on higher education. Yes, students need financial support and that is why there are social scholarships in the amount of 925 lei per month, a value established by the National Council for Financing Higher Education. Also, 40,000 students benefit from scholarships. Faculties receive a scholarship fund from the Ministry of Education in a total value of 1.5 billion RON and they decide how many are social, but no less than 30% of those they grant. We would like the scholarships to be more and bigger, for sure, but this state that we demand to pay them is not a foreign entity that keeps its own money in chests buried in secret places," the prime minister pointed out.
According to it, the country's financial balance must be maintained.
"Any permanent increase must be made gradually, as the budget allows, so that it is a safe, predictable and sustainable increase. Beyond scholarships, public funding of higher education is substantial. In last year's funding data, approximately 8,500 RON per year were allocated for each student's tuition, a total of 6 billion RON. For accommodation in dormitories - 256 million RON, and for the transport subsidy - 34 million RON. These figures show that there is a real and constant budgetary effort," Bolojan argued.
He believes that a substantial increase in the Education budget cannot be made from one year to the next.
In his opinion, the quality of training in universities must increase, and funding must not only be based on the number of students, but on the performance of study programs, the performance of students, how many graduate, how many work in the fields for which they trained, with what results.
"We need to have a clear picture of the graduates' path. We need public, transparent data on the path after graduation: to what extent they work in the fields for which they were trained, what are the results by programs and universities. For example: how many graduates of medical schools promote residency, by universities, and how many then end up working in hospitals in Romania? Such data helps the state to better size the funded places and helps young people make informed decisions," Ilie Bolojan pointed out.
Also, the interim Minister of Education states, academic bureaucracy must be reduced, the recruitment and promotion mechanism for teachers must be improved, and academic integrity must be strengthened.
Ilie Bolojan believes that knowledge transfer to society must be a central function of universities: applied research, innovation, collaborations with the economy and administration, solutions for communities, and universities must be an engine of modernization.
"I was surprised to see in the two pages written by a university lecturer nothing about what should concern us beyond populism and demagogy regarding higher education. Nothing about its adaptation to today's and tomorrow's world, about its quality and about what it gives back to society in exchange for supporting studies. (...) For the authors of today's motion, all of this does not matter. Like all their politics, their approach is just a simplistic exploitation of an emotional theme. It should not surprise us that this is all they understand from school, but it should scare us that this is their vision of the future," Ilie Bolojan conveyed.
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