The Technical University of Moldova (UTM) intends to attract students from India, namely to two specialties – software engineering and veterinary medicine. On Friday, UTM, the Ministry of Education and Research and the Western NIS Enterprise Fund signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the internationalization of higher education in Moldova, IPN reports.

Minister of Education Dan Perciun said the signing of this memorandum represents a first swallow. It goes to almost US$200,000 that was made available to UTM to attract as many students as possible, especially from India, to two specialties – IT and veterinary medicine.

“We are all going to make an effort to succeed in bringing them to the Republic of Moldova, to train teachers, to have these specialties in English. It is the start of this internationalization effort, which will continue in the coming years. The next step for us will be a larger project, worth already US$1 million, with World Bank support, for four universities. We are sure that in 2025 we will be able to mobilize additional resources to capitalize on this first pilot project, for which we are very grateful,” said the minister.

UTM rector Viorel Bostan said that today higher education in Moldova is at high standards, recognized by a number of countries. Thus, it makes sense to orient to other markets where students can come from. “UTM has indeed set itself the goal of increasing the number of international students. We have already seen quite good growth in the last two years, but anyway we are talking about relatively small figures. We noted that it is very important to reach some much nicer figures. We have that potential. There is a lot to do,” noted the rector.

According to him, more measures are to be taken within this project, and first of all – ensuring the international accreditation of programs of study. “We want to focus on the Indian market and, in this regard, we must ensure that the quality of the programs of study is at the highest level, the human resource is ready to cope, the university infrastructure is brought to a level that meets essential standards so that we serve as an example and share our experience with other universities in the Republic of Moldova within a number of internationalization projects,” said Viorel Bostan.