UPT rector advises balance, moderation and responsibility

The allocation of state financed university seats for the 2018/2019 term

We have borne witness to new tensions in the academic environment. The allocation of university seats financed by the state for the 2018/2019 term for first-year students – grants for university bachelor, masters and Ph.D. studies – raised a wave of aggressive reactions on behalf of some universities that are part of the Universitaria Consortium (“the oldest and most prestigious universities in Romania”). Their accusation is the fact that seats allocation was made mostly according to political criteria and came as a “revenge” against the universities whose rectors refused to sign in the beginning of the year an open letter to support prof. eng. Valentin Popa, Ph.D., for the position of Minister for National Education. Moreover, in the declarations made by these universities in mass-media, there are some offending claims regarding the qualifications that belong to the field of engineering sciences.

Considering everything, as the rector of Politehnica University Timișoara and president of the Alliance of Technical Universities in Romania (ARUT), prof. eng. Viorel-Aurel Șerban, Ph.D. declared the following:

• Politehnica University Timișoara had been allocated in comparison with the current term, an additional 60 seats for bachelor studies, 85 seats for master studies and 4 seat less for Ph.D. studies considering that the rector did not sign a support letter for Valentin Popa, a fact he also publicly stated.
• In the last previous years, UPT and ARUT had requested a new way of allocating university seats (this could be found in CNR resolutions and ARUT declarations, www.aruteh.ro), a way that reflects the objectives from the National Strategy for Tertiary Learning for 2015-2020 (article 71: “Romania has currently the largest number of graduates in the field of social and economic science in the EU. … Consequently, considering that the majority of the performant sectors of the Romanian economy are associated with engineering sciences (including agriculture), it is necessary to correlate the offer in tertiary learning with the needs of the labor market, the training of specialized and qualified workers being an essential condition for the evolution and competitiveness of the Romanian economy”).
• The fact that for the first time ever, seats allocation takes into account priority fields and providing support for students that graduated rural high schools (another objective of the National Strategy – “The improvement of the participation in tertiary learning” – underrepresented groups) is only to be appreciated, not to be blamed in the manner that it had been blamed in mass-media, that is only from the perspective of political interests.
• The mockery of engineering specializations, the declarations of implied superiority over the politics of technical universities (some of which are even older and perhaps as prestigious as some of the disputatious universities) are considered unfortunate and showing a lack of respect and consideration.

We will not reply in such manner and we will not bring public arguments on the subject at hand, arguments that could further the tensions in the academic environment, and that could affect the image of the superior educational system as a whole.

We ask the universities and their associated structures to exert balance and moderation in the messages and opinions they state publicly.