The Alliance of Technical Universities from Romania reunited at Cluj-Napoca
May, 4-6, 2017
From the 4th to 6th of May 2017, The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca hosted the rectors’ meeting of the biggest Romanian technical universities of The Alliance of Techincal Universities from Romania (ARUT). This alliance’s founding members are University Politehnica of Bucharest, Politehnica University of Timisoara, “Gheorghe Asachi” Technical University of Iasi, Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest and The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca.
During the press conference, ARUT’s representatives have formulated altogheter the importance of engineering and the necessity of gaining back the confindence in this matter for the future development of Romania: “Romania’s education faces big challenges. As decision makers, ARUT universities’ duty is to gain back the confidence in engineering”, declared UTCN’s rector, Vasile Topa. The lack of engineers is a problem of the Romanian society, which represents a warning to be aware of the processes that are present in the Romanian education. The constant growth of engineers demand on the labour market is due to the large companies from the cities, but also because of a big engineers exodus after 1989.
The talking points that the ARUT members brought up concerned proposals for The New Education Bill; research in technical universities and how to implement fiscal methods for the research-development activities; how to implement the new standards of ARACIS; the position of technical universities based on the university classification criteria and the hierarchization of study programmes, as well as ARUT internationalization through policies of adhering on networks, associations and European universities programmes.
ARUT plans to show a collaboration platform for the five technical universities in Romania, and also a strong and common voice that is always involved in the optimization of educational and research policies. It was also mentioned that the ARUT university members are not competing with the humanities universities and that they have an continous and joint preoccupation for the direction where Romania desires to develop.
The main mission of this alliance is to contribute in social change and the rise of specialized workforce, with a clearer vision towards supporting the competitivity in the Romanian economy. ARUT’s meeting in Cluj was a fruitful one. The common messages and the five universities representatives’ conclusions would follow afterwards.
