Moldovan rectors say tuition fees are low

The rectors of a number of Moldovan universities say tuition fees are low as compared with current costs and personnel expenses; government subsidies are hardly sufficient and there's almost nothing left for development. Deputy Education Minister Loretta Handrabura told a press conference on Tuesday that the government spends annually 15,800 lei on a subsidized place in a university, and the monthly subsidies for a place in a student dormitory range from 95 to 210 lei. Grigore Belostecinic, Rector of the Economics Academy of Moldova (ASEM), stated that the last time when ASEM raised tuition fees was in 2008, from 5,500 to 6,800 lei on average. The dorm fee is 140 lei a month, meaning 4 lei a day, which Belostecinic says is not at all much, considering that the students have all the necessary conditions, including water, electricity and access to the Internet. Grigore Belostecinic thinks that it is a normal thing for tuition fees to differ depending on the university's reputation. He also thinks that tuition fees should be capped, but only in the lower limit sense. “Smaller tuition fees imply poorer studies and conditions, or they indicate that there are some financial schemes to avoid declaring incomes”, said Belostecinic. Gheorghe Ciocan, Rector of the Moldova State University, noted that the 4.5 million lei collected annually in dorm fees was not enough to cover the University's costs of maintaining the dormitories, which amounted to about 12 million lei. “Of course we are thinking about the parents, but we also want to keep the quality of the provided education at a high level. And value costs”, stated Gheorghe Ciocan. Petru Todos, Senior Deputy Rector of the Technical University (UTM), said that compared with the fees asked by European universities, the annual fee of 6,500 lei asked by UTM was merely symbolical. “Quality costs. To educate an engineer, one needs not only a blackboard, chalk and chairs, but also labs, which are extremely costly to set up”. “Each year the per student costs get bigger because of the shrinking number of students. Yet the number of buildings, classrooms and personnel remains the same. We need to review tuition fees and adjust them to the actual costs”, concluded Petru Tudos. Moldova has 30 higher education institutions, including 17 public universities.