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President's message
The Academic Council Chair's Message for the 2009 - 2010 academic year
On international level the Romanian university operates in a context marked by the phenomenon of globalization, of the knowledge-based economy and progress in the information and communications technology (ICT) with huge impact on society and economy.
Consequently, the globalization leads to a competition for resources, caused by the increase in the number of the world's population, the diminishing of resources, the environmental damage. In the context of a knowledge-based economy, the World Bank, OECD, UN (UNESCO) believe that tertiary education is becoming increasingly important, being the essential factor in the social development, through its learning, research, communication, innovation, and knowledge storage activities. This fact triggered the higher education massification and a competition for the human resource, for the higher education personnel qualified for research and higher education. ICT triggered mutations of great impact in the lifestyle, style of work, in the companies management or in the higher education institutions and even in the teaching-learning manner.
At national level, we are still in a period of mutations from one type of society to another and we haven't yet reached political and legal stability; the non-productive flaws of the autarchic society in which we lived until 1989 could not be fixed yet; people's mentality is the most difficult to change. The demographic decline, an European characteristic, is affecting the quota of candidates applying for admission, but it will worsen after 2010 and in 2020 it will lead to a decrease in the schooling population by 33%.
Romania's access to the EU and the free movement is already leading to an intense competition on the higher education market.
The economic crisis occurred unexpectedly as it could not be foreseen by any predictions made by economists or politicians. This is a crisis in the system of values of a society based more on consumption rather than on work. This is the crisis of a lifestyle based on speculative opportunities, on appearances and less on basic moral, religious values. We must be cautious and understand that the crisis period continues and the crisis will deepen in the coming year.
The 2009-2010 academic year started successfully in terms of the interest manifested towards our university, despite the predicted demographic decline. For the academic courses this year 23,372 candidates enrolled, out of which 15.567confirmed their enrolment. The number of international students for this year is 640 (out of which 90 are waiting to be issued a visa), compared to the last year when the number was 497. The number of foreign doctoral students has increased considerably reaching 160 compared to 107 last year. It is true that because of the economic crisis, the budgetary funds declined substantially, but they are partially replaced by funds other than from the state budget: European funding, research programmes and bilateral cooperation, etc.
In the past year we had projects that won European funding worth 31,768,975 Euro, and other already accepted projects worth 19,75 m Euro. The Euro is on hold. The Capital magazine considers us to be the most attractive university from the point of view of the firms.
The Babes-Bolyai University is already facing two important problems: the demographic drop and the increasing competition on the higher education market, which coincided with the EU entry and with the increased globalization tendency. This competition should not be regarded only in terms of the "threat" of developing foreign university branches in Romania but also in terms of prompting our talented youth, through sound policies, to study in universities abroad. The University is no longer an actor only in its environment but, willingly or not it becomes a player on the global market of education. These issues will become a matter of survival. The structure of the university budget is changing and it is foreseeable that in a few years time it will depend essentially on the research/development activity, while the state budget allocations will increasingly decrease under crisis conditions. The economic crisis appears to be more serious than we would like to accept, and the budgetary execution is a proof in this respect; decreasing the budgetary allocation, and the research and providing services revenues are making the financial implementation of the university more and more difficult. It is obvious that innovation is needed in order to make progress.
In the important global rankings of universities, deemed as such at the IREG-4 and WCU-3 conferences of 2009 from Astana and Shanghai (the Shanghai classification of universities or the Institute of Higher Education classification in Taipei - Taiwan) the highly reputed universities are considered to be those that have high-level scientific research: Nobel Prizes, 'highly cited' researchers, articles in Nature and Science, ISI articles. Although not present in the mentioned rankings reputation is also achieved through publication with leading publishers such as Gallimard, Elsevier, Springer, Blackwell, etc. to give just a few random names. But there is also the employers' view which is taken into account by Times Higher Education Supplement - Quaccarelli Simonds Ranking. These are the quality brand universities (which enter the category of the first 500 universities) and draw international students in large numbers. Our University is located around position 700 in the above-mentioned rankings, a highly honorable position if we take into consideration the fact that there are around 16,000 universities in the world and a total amount of about 30,000 higher education institutions.
On the other hand, an exclusive focus on research is actually neglecting the first mission of the university, that of teaching and training highly qualified personnel for the economy and society, and thus leads to unexpected effects, especially with universities of international profile: those gaining teaching/research positions and gaining access to doctoral and post-doctoral programmes are graduates with no teaching skills, and even lacking knowledge of the teaching language. It is not the case with the Babes-Bolyai University, but I insisted in making this remark: teaching should not be neglected, but focused on the transfer of knowledge and especially on achieving skills that will enable the graduate to enter the labour market and to be able to create jobs. Teaching should obviously focus on skills, which is revealed even by our own course curriculum, but without neglecting the basic, fundamental training; we must not transform our society today in a society composed of individuals who specialize in very narrow fields in which they are doubtlessly competent, but of specialists who are able to understand the world we live in, the ways in which society develops, the reasons for the human existence. The term "competencies", which is currently much vehiculated by political leaders, has existed since 2003 in the official documents of the university, in a period during which the transition to the Bologna system in Romania was felt as imminent (the transition took place in 2004). But the formation of "competent persons" who do not understand the meaning and the necessity of their competence is dangerous. We are concerned with forming competent citizens with a good understanding of the society they live in and of humanity in general. Recently the Babes-Bolyai University has also explicitly assumed liability for its cultural function/mission. In its cultural mission, the university directs the research and the curriculum in such a direction that it responds to emerging social needs, providing innovative ideas and practices to solve local problems, to improve the social importance of knowledge throughout the entire community, to develop national topics for high performance intellects, coated by values of responsible and productive citizenship and to meet the challenges of globalization and of multicultural societies.
These concerns of the Babes-Bolyai University are also reflected by a recent ranking published in the Capital magazine according to firms and graduates outlook on the quality of the Romanian universities. According to this ranking in first and second position are situated the Babes-Bolyai University from Cluj and respectively the University from Bucharest, in this order. This shows that the universities with a tradition, with a culture for quality are perceived as such by the society.
Lately we can identify an increasing interest in the rankings of universities, with considerable influence on the perception of the university in society and globally. Multinational companies are orienting their business towards areas with high density of competence, certified by the existence of renowned universities in the respective area. For the first time we are included in the category of Top QS Universities, on the website THES-QS ranking.
In the Webometrics Ranking of World's Universities, which actually reflects the UBB visibility on the internet, the university went up, through its sustained efforts, from being in position 1,400 in 2007, to being in position 1,034 in 2009, together with the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University from Iasi, the University of Bucharest, The Politechnics University in Bucharest, the Gh. Asachi Technical University from Iasi.
Major countries like Germany, UK, Malaysia, China etc. have created programmes of excellence, precisely in order to support elite universities, which are inevitably present in the mentioned rankings, but mostly which are able to be "drivers" (stimuli/promoters) in the economic and social development. As a result, even on national level there are increasingly heated discussions on the need for ranking the Romanian universities and developing a programme for excellence support, so that at the end of 2010 we will be presented with methodologies for defining excellence (I hope the term does not trivialize!) and excellence support programmes undertaken by the political side. The Babes-Bolyai University, one of the two Romanian universities taken into consideration by the world rankings, will definitely belong to the elite class which is to be defined.
Therefore, in order to remain in the higher education competitive market we will have to do the following:
- attract students from all possible markets, external but also internal, through an active and qualified presence on the higher education market;
- increase the share of international research, with clear goals of contributing to knowledge development at global level, to the economic and social development of Romania and to gain a highly visible international certification.
- continuously seek to improve the quality of the processes taking place in the university, whether learning, research, providing services, student, administrative, economic social services. And this through a total quality integrated concept which is promoted by the Academic Council
