Perverse Effects of Change in the Romanian Academic Field
- Autores: Dumitru Stan
- Localización: Revista de Cercetare si Interventie Sociala, ISSN-e 1584-5397, Vol. 48, 2015, págs. 183-203
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
According to the conclusions of a sociological research carried out almost two decades ago, for a person to become part of the Romanian society’s elite, one had to be a university graduate. Anyone who succeeded in getting remarkable results in economy, sports, music, politics, etc., was recognized as a rightful member of the elite only if she/he was also a university graduate. At that time, the higher education system in Romania was functioning, to a large extent, on the organizational and scientific bases established before 1990. Since then, all levels of the national educational system were reformed, including the university, based on the idea that the country’s social improvement depends primarily on the quality of education received by young generations. In order to assess the value of higher education reforms and to establish whether the university continues to be viewed as a generator of Romanian elites, we revised several aspects of the aforementioned research in a new investigation. The results reflect again the positive image that university students and teaching staff have about themselves and about the socio-cultural responsibilities of higher education institutions. Unlike the previous research, ours found out two very frequent criticisms in the subjects’ answers: a. the crisis within the university is about to become as severe as the other types of crisis in the social system; b. as the social recognition of the university graduate diminishes, so do the elite status and the people’s trust in the potential of the university, while the university’s crisis deepens.
