Experts of the project “EUniAM” of the TEMPUS program, supported by the European Commission, suggest restructuring the higher education system of Moldova so as to create larger and more powerful public universities and a multi- and interdisciplinary teaching base for all the cycles of studies.

In a news conference at IPN on May 26, project coordinator Romeo Turcan said there are 19 state-run higher education establishments and 15 research institutions in Moldova. Within the project, it was established that the number of state-run education institutions can be reduced to seven, while the research centers can be integrated into these. The merger will allow avoiding the unnecessary doubling of disciplines.

The experts suggest clearly delimiting the roles and responsibilities of the Government and the universities in managing the system by regulations and institutional university autonomy. According to them, the Ministry of Education should be renamed the Ministry of Education, Research and Innovation so that it covers more areas. A number of agencies should be created within the Ministry so as to ensure the connection between the universities and other ministers, while the universities will have direct connection only with the Ministry of Education, to which they will report on aspects related to their activity in a common format.

The experts of the project consider it necessary to make a clear separation between the university government and administration. They also propose introducing student-centered teaching based on learning results and teaching based on research.

The proposals will be discussed within several seminars in Chisinau, Cahul and Balti. These can be downloaded from http://www.euniam.aau.dk. Suggestions and opinions can be submitted to euniam@adm.aau.dk. National project coordinator Larisa Bugaian, pro-rector of the Technical University Moldova, said a number of roundtable meetings, workshops and experience-exchange visits to European states  have been so far staged within the project.