Romania’s low university participation rates and “homogeneous” higher education system should be priorities for the country’s new president, experts have said, as he takes up the role in a time of political turbulence after seeing off a challenge from the far right.

The centrist, pro-European Union Nicușor Dan, who was mayor of Bucharest before taking up the presidency, defeated the Donald Trump-admiring George Simion earlier this month, after the  in December amid allegations of Russian interference.

A mathematics prodigy in his youth, Dan earned a PhD in maths at the University of Paris North, then known as Paris 13 University, later becoming a researcher at the Romanian Academy.

He called for education reform throughout his campaign and again in his first speech as president, noted Pușa Năstase, senior programme manager at Central European University’s Yehuda Elkana Center for Teaching, Learning and Higher Education Research.

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“There is a sense that he understands the rigours of higher education, and that he will prioritise the reform of higher education in general, and of research in particular,” Năstase said.

Mihail Chiru, a politics lecturer at the University of Oxford, said Romania’s higher education system was hindered by underfunding as well as previous “inconsistent” reform attempts.

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“The underfunding is partly explained by the fact that Romania has comparatively very low budgetary revenues due to very low taxes and poor collection, but also by governments continuously prioritising spending on other areas such as law enforcement and intelligence,” he said, adding that “researchers have been demotivated by low salaries and poor working conditions”.

Education and research minister Daniel David recently undertook a review of Romanian higher education and research, commenting in  that the country has “too few higher education graduates compared to the general population”, with only 16 per cent of adults holding a degree, and is “vulnerable to brain drain”.

The country’s research system “produces too little knowledge”, while of the knowledge produced, “too little is of quality”, David concluded, proposing reforms to enable the system to “generate highly qualified human resources”.

Georgios Samaras, assistant professor of public policy at King’s College London, said excess “homogeneity” in the Romanian university system “undermines academic quality,” adding that a lack of reform “threatens the vital link between higher education and scientific progress”.

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Asked if he anticipates that Dan will prioritise higher education and research, Samaras commented, “I hope so” but warned that he takes up the presidency under “exceptionally challenging circumstances”.

Some believe that higher education reform will be overshadowed by more urgent concerns, among them a significant budget deficit and widespread polarisation. “The policy priority for any government would be to repair the disadvantages in the household budget,” said László Marácz, senior lecturer in European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. “There will not be much room left to support higher education additionally.”

Oxford’s Chiru warned that if the government pursues austerity policies and a downsizing of the public sector, it will likely negatively impact higher education and science.

Cristina Corduneanu-Huci, an associate professor in Central European University’s department of public policy, said the new president “will have the very difficult task of restoring public trust in governing institutions, bridging a high level of political polarisation and reaching out to anti-systemic voters who have been disappointed by Romanian governance in the last three decades”.

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But Dan’s election was met with “relief and enthusiasm in Brussels”, Corduneanu-Huci noted.

And Chiru said that this “goodwill from EU leaders” after the election results “might translate into more room for manoeuvre in meeting certain deadlines to which EU funding schemes are tied”.

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“Romanian researchers’ associations have also raised the issue of divergences between the legislation on research in Romania and European regulations, and the current situation might present a good opportunity to address them,” he added.

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com