Budget places to be allocated directly, in the form of a voucher, to graduates who obtained high grades in the Baccalaureate exam. It is the version proposed by Marian Preda, rector of the University of Bucharest, to solve the problem of financing in higher education. ,“It is a free market where every young person with a voucher can choose where to study”Preda said. Can such an idea be implemented? What are the benefits and what are the risks? We analyzed all of this with student representatives and Education specialist Gabi Bartic.
Statements by Marian Preda
“We give the first 30% of the graduates who took the Baccalaureate, which are 30,000 (future) students, a voucher, which is a place financed from the budget. The following vouchers can be given, for example, to the best in a certain subject. If you are in the first 25% in only one discipline, but you do not have a high overall average – you are good at arts, you are good at music, you are good at history or any of the subjects in which you took the Baccalaureate – then you receive funding for a budgeted place at the university, and we also support these children with vouchers through which they can take places financed from the budget at the university. And if there are still places, they can be given in the form of partial funding, grants based on other criteria, including social ones, etc. (…)After that, it is a free market in which every young person with a voucher has a choice of where to study”said Marian Preda, rector of the University of Bucharest in an interview for edupedu.
He believes that the current system allows for “incredibly unfair” practices:
“You receive undergraduate places, you don’t occupy them – I’m talking about a practice that has been legalized for several years now and by the last law – and you convert them. And pay attention that this money is given to the general, that is, it is given to the university: if the university has specific technicalities and no longer has places in engineering, but has some faculties of socio-humanities, economics, business, law, they move their places there. And then I gave the university the places to do business at a technical university? do you do public administration at a technical university?”.
ANOSR criticizes the proposal
The National Alliance of Student Organizations in Romania (ANOSR) does not believe that such an option would work.
“This option would not only lead to a spontaneous, unpredictable and slightly chaotic shutdown of some study programs, either temporarily or permanently, but in itself will not help to better match the educational offer with the labor market, and, in fact, the main purpose of universities should not even be to deliver employees. Universities have social missions, they develop the economy through research and innovation, but they also operate on freedom and freedom of expression, and the right to study what a young person wants must not conflict with a competitive or entrepreneurial vision, they can coexist, but the right to freely choose what each person wants to study must receive”Sergiu Covaci, the president of the organization, said for Adevărul.
He comes up with another proposition:
“A solution that can work is to allocate more budgeted places in some areas by applying a coefficient that also takes into account the need of the labor market, but also the need for the development of some sectors, as well as competitiveness in the field. A balance is needed between all these aspects, but a variant of university management in this way may not sufficiently exploit the already created university infrastructures, may not respond to the intentions of all candidates, respectively may not make sufficient contributions to the labor market either.”
Student: “It can further limit access to higher education”
We also asked Mihnea Stoica, second-year law student and former general secretary of the National Student Council, for his opinion. He draws attention to a major risk: “The decrease in the number of people enrolled in universities and, implicitly, the decrease in the number of people with higher education”.
Can Romania put such an idea into practice? Mihnea believes that yes, but that it will not bring benefits:
“With a well-defined legal framework, this system can be implemented. But, in my opinion, it is not a system that can have a positive impact in the country where only 17.4% of the population has higher education, far below the European average. Thus, I do not believe that this system would be feasible. There is also the issue of college entrance exams. In the proposed system, the occupation of the budgeted places would be conditional, exclusively on the Baccalaureate. This would mean, de facto, the complete abolition of entrance exams, a fact that could represent a benefit, but the Baccalaureate exam has not been changed for years and many faculties do not consider that it achieves an effective delimitation between students”.
The student also identified a problem that could arise:
“There is the issue of the value of the voucher, which can fall – for example, in the situation of austerity measures – below the level necessary to ensure a free place. There is also the issue of differences between taxes. Even at the university that Mr. Preda leads, there is a substantial difference between the cost of the study fee of the Faculty of Law and the cost of the study fees of the other faculties within the institution. So, the question is how could a voucher be granted that would ensure the gratuity for each type of tax”.
Gabi Bartic: “The proposed variant puts a necessary discussion on the table”
Education specialist Gabi Bartic comes with a different vision. Although he does not believe that the version proposed by Marian Preda is a solution, he sees it as a good starting point for an important debate.
“The proposed variant has a clear merit: it puts on the table a necessary discussion about the rigidity of the current university education financing system and about the fact that, currently, the student has too little real decision-making power in relation to the institution. The idea that funding should be more closely linked to the student’s choice and pathway is a legitimate one and appears, in various forms, in other systems as well.
At the same time, formulated as a dominant principle – “funding follows the student” – the proposal risks oversimplifying a system that operates through fine balances between demand, institutional capacity and public interest. For this reason, it is a good starting point for debate rather than a complete solution in its current form.”
In order for the measure to be implemented, it would be necessary to radically change the legal framework:
“Currently, Romanian legislation finances universities as institutions, not students as direct beneficiaries of public funds. The transition to a voucher-type system would entail: changing the financing philosophy from the law, redefining the budget allocation mechanisms, establishing clear criteria for capping and prioritization by field”, says Gabi Bartic.
The biggest risks
Asked about the risks, she says that the greatest would be the imbalance of the educational offer:
,, Concretely: certain very popular fields (Law, Medicine, Psychology, IT) could be overloaded, beyond the real capacity to ensure quality; fundamental or strategic fields, but less “attractive” for graduates, could quickly become underfunded or even disappear; universities would be incentivized to maximize the volume of students, not necessarily the quality of training; the institutions’ budgets would become extremely volatile, which affects medium and long-term planning”.
Another aspect to consider is what will happen to graduates whose averages were not high enough to receive a voucher. Will they still want to enroll in college if they know they have no chance of getting a place on the budget?
“A system in which the voucher becomes the dominant signal can produce a psychological deterrent effect, especially for students from vulnerable backgrounds. Even if there are paid seats, the default message may be: <
In the absence of clear compensatory mechanisms (robust social grants, well-regulated study loans, real support for access), there is a risk that some graduates will not try at all, reinforcing existing inequalities, not reducing them”says Gabi Bartic.
Blended financing, an option that could work
A model focused exclusively on demand is not, in itself, a better solution than the current method of funding universities, believes the education specialist.
“A more solid option would be a mixed one: a basic institutional financing, which ensures stability and protects strategic areas; supplemented by mechanisms where student choice matters more than at present; with ceilings and priorities explicitly assumed by the state.
In other words, it is not about choosing between “funding the institution” and “funding the student”, but to build a system in which the two logics are balanced, not pitted against each other”. Gabi Bartic thinks.
This also came with a disclaimer:
“My comments come from the perspective of a professional with expertise in the area of pre-university education, especially in the segment of assessment, equity and transition from high school to university education. My analysis therefore relates strictly to admissions mechanisms, the relationship between educational demand and supply at the end of the pre-university cycle, and how different systems attempt to regulate this transition. I do not claim to know in detail the fine mechanisms that govern the functioning of the Romanian university environment today, from the inside. Instead, I am familiar with the relevant legislative framework, the current funding logic and some of the comparable international practice, and my observations are based on these benchmarks and on experience working with students, schools and education systems in transition.
For this reason, my intervention is not one about university administration, but about the systemic effects that certain public policy choices can produce on access, equity, and the educational decisions of high school graduates.”
