The Romanian Higher Educational System – before and after the Bologna moment. Case study of a Romanian university

Abstract

The article represents part of a wider research initiative that aims to follow the main structural changes that happened within the Romanian universities determined by the implementation of the Bologna Process. The literature review consists in the description of the main turning points of the Romanian Higher Education System in the post-communist period, with two distinct subchapters: one that refers to the pre-Bologna period and one on the post-Bologna period until present day. We follow the main legislative changes and their effects on the Romanian Higher Education System, structural modifications, external influences, even on student number evolution. The second part of the paper is a quantitative analysis of the evolution of four selected bachelor programs from a Romanian University, starting ten years before the Bologna Process implementation until present day. Using document analysis, we follow two main parameters: the number of teaching hours for each program and the number of disciplines for each program. The aim of the research is to identify the changes that occurred within the selected programs in the investigated period, with emphasis on the Bologna Process implementation moment (2005). The data show that each of the programs selected had particularities on the evolutions of their curriculums, some differences can be noticed between pre and post Bologna periods. Due to the fact that all the bachelor programs were restructured after the Bologna moment into 6 semesters from 8 in all of the analyzed programs, we had expected to find clear decrease in the number of teaching hours per program and the number of disciplines per program, but, surprisingly, this was not a general tendency.

Keywords

• bologna process
• higher education system
• curriculum