The president of the Academy of Sciences Ion Tighineanu criticizes the higher education reform that was recently announced by the Ministry of Education and Research. He said the institutes of research learned about the Government’s intention to merge them with universities from press reports. The reform is nondemocratic and nontransparent. For his part, Minister of Education Anatolie Topală said the optimization of universities and their merger with the institutes of research are necessary steps due to the precarious demographic situation in Moldova, IPN reports.
The minister said the higher education reform will help improve the quality of studies, enhance the competitiveness of universities at foreign level and ensure harmonious cooperation between students and researchers. As the number of students and researchers decreases continuously, the merger of the university and research sectors is unavoidable.
“The main idea is to concentrate the human and financial resources and to ensure research is conducted in universities. The reform is late. According to statistics, the number of researchers and students decreased the last few years. Many students choose to study outside the country. An extra sum of 700 million lei will be allocated from the state budget for modernizing higher education. This will lead to benefits for students, teaching staff and researchers. This way we will be able to improve the work conditions, to raise salaries and to diversify the programs of study. We will create new specialties. We want research and higher education to cooperate with the business community so that we train specialists who are really necessary in the national economy,” Anatolie Topală stated in the program “Common Objective” on TVR Moldova channel.
The president of the Academy of Sciences Ion Tighineanu noted the reform lacks transparency and the employees of research institutes weren’t asked to pronounce on the optimization.
“As a result of the reform of 2017, the research institutes were transferred from the Academy of Sciences under the management of the Ministry of Education. Now the Ministry wants to join them with universities. Before starting a reform of such a scale, an assessment is needed. No assessment was carried out. Mates from research institutes told me that they learned about the reform from the press. Who took this decision? As far as we know, the Ministry does not have a board. There was constituted an interinstitutional group that didn’t convene. A proposal to optimize the institutes and to reduce their number from 18 to 6 was formulated earlier. It was also proposed transferring them back to the Academy of Sciences. Nothing was accepted! What is done now is not correct and democratic,” stated Ion Tighineanu.
The Ministry of Education and Research decided that the State University of Moldova will absorb the Public Administration Academy, the State University of Physical Education and Sport and a number of national institutes. The Agrarian University will be absorbed by the Technical University. The Academy of Economic Studies will absorb the National Institute of Economic Research, while the State Teacher Training University “Ion Creangă” will absorb the Tiraspol State University and the Taraclia State University “Grigorii Țamblac”. Most of the research institutes will be transferred under the management of the State University, Technical University and “Ion Creangă” University.
