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University challenges: Funding
Almost every second high school graduate in Bulgaria continues on to one of the 51 universities in the country, giving the country one of the highest numbers of university graduates in the European Union. PETAR KOSTADINOV takes a look at university funding and what a high school graduate can expect when enrolling at one of the leading Bulgarian universities, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski.
State universities in Bulgaria continue to dominate the country’s higher educational system. Currently there are seven private universities in comparison with the 47 that are subsidised by the state.
Unlike state-owned schools and kindergartens, state universities enjoy a certain autonomy from both the Education and Finance ministries. Each university has the right to take decisions about its educational programmes, the number of professors and non-teaching staff, studies, internal order, signing of international agreements and so on.
It can also operate as an independent legal entity, meaning that it can sign co-operation agreements and deal with its property by selling or renting it out, thus finding sources for additional incomes.
When it comes to money, however, this autonomy exists only on paper because all state-owned universities rely on budget subsidies.
This means that every year, the Education Ministry makes suggestions to the Cabinet, which later adopts an annual allowance awarded to each university student. Based on that allowance and the number of students each university has, the Finance Ministry allocates money to each of the 47 universities. So the simple rule is the more students, the more money from the state budget a university gets.
This is where it becomes complicated, because, according to the Education Act, the state approves the number of students for each university based on the proposals the university itself has made to the Education Ministry.
It is the ministry’s role to “calm down” universities’ demands for more and more students every year.
For this purpose, the state usually keeps a record of the number of students from the past several years and does surveys that presumably show what the Bulgarian economy will need in terms of qualified labour force in the next five to 10 years. All this combined sets the number of students each university can accept.
The problem is that most universities, such as Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski and Veliko Turnovo’s St Kiril and Metodii University, offer education in almost every sphere of life, so they always end up having the highest number of students.
These numbers vary from one faculty to the other, depending on the current trend.
Other universities tried to follow their example in the mid 1990s. This led to chaos in the country’s higher educational system because universities such as Varna’s Technical University, for example, suddenly started teaching law and maritime studies.
The admission exam criteria in universities with no tradition in teaching law, for instance, were lower than those at Sofia University and quite a large number of students ended up with a law diploma that earned little respect in professional circles.
The other problem was the lack of qualified professors who could teach at those universities. It was a logical consequence because, for decades, law had been taught mainly at Sofia University and when suddenly there were 10 other universities teaching law, those professors had to come from somewhere.
The results was that those professors started teaching at the universities as freelancers. They had their motivation for doing such, given the low salaries they were getting paid by their home universities. All this led to professors touring the country teaching at more than one university a week. It was the same with other subjects, like medicine and engineering.
In the end, it was the students who suffered because they had to wait for the professor to come to them, not the other way around.
This system was terminated at the end of the 1990s and some of the newly opened faculties were closed. Students who were interested in getting a law diploma but who were not willing to take the difficult admission exams for Sofia University, for example, headed to private universities, which, in the meantime, had managed to establish themselves as real competition to the state-owned.
June 6 2008, Source: sofiaecho.com
State universities in Bulgaria continue to dominate the country’s higher educational system. Currently there are seven private universities in comparison with the 47 that are subsidised by the state.
Unlike state-owned schools and kindergartens, state universities enjoy a certain autonomy from both the Education and Finance ministries. Each university has the right to take decisions about its educational programmes, the number of professors and non-teaching staff, studies, internal order, signing of international agreements and so on.
It can also operate as an independent legal entity, meaning that it can sign co-operation agreements and deal with its property by selling or renting it out, thus finding sources for additional incomes.
When it comes to money, however, this autonomy exists only on paper because all state-owned universities rely on budget subsidies.
This means that every year, the Education Ministry makes suggestions to the Cabinet, which later adopts an annual allowance awarded to each university student. Based on that allowance and the number of students each university has, the Finance Ministry allocates money to each of the 47 universities. So the simple rule is the more students, the more money from the state budget a university gets.
This is where it becomes complicated, because, according to the Education Act, the state approves the number of students for each university based on the proposals the university itself has made to the Education Ministry.
It is the ministry’s role to “calm down” universities’ demands for more and more students every year.
For this purpose, the state usually keeps a record of the number of students from the past several years and does surveys that presumably show what the Bulgarian economy will need in terms of qualified labour force in the next five to 10 years. All this combined sets the number of students each university can accept.
The problem is that most universities, such as Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski and Veliko Turnovo’s St Kiril and Metodii University, offer education in almost every sphere of life, so they always end up having the highest number of students.
These numbers vary from one faculty to the other, depending on the current trend.
Other universities tried to follow their example in the mid 1990s. This led to chaos in the country’s higher educational system because universities such as Varna’s Technical University, for example, suddenly started teaching law and maritime studies.
The admission exam criteria in universities with no tradition in teaching law, for instance, were lower than those at Sofia University and quite a large number of students ended up with a law diploma that earned little respect in professional circles.
The other problem was the lack of qualified professors who could teach at those universities. It was a logical consequence because, for decades, law had been taught mainly at Sofia University and when suddenly there were 10 other universities teaching law, those professors had to come from somewhere.
The results was that those professors started teaching at the universities as freelancers. They had their motivation for doing such, given the low salaries they were getting paid by their home universities. All this led to professors touring the country teaching at more than one university a week. It was the same with other subjects, like medicine and engineering.
In the end, it was the students who suffered because they had to wait for the professor to come to them, not the other way around.
This system was terminated at the end of the 1990s and some of the newly opened faculties were closed. Students who were interested in getting a law diploma but who were not willing to take the difficult admission exams for Sofia University, for example, headed to private universities, which, in the meantime, had managed to establish themselves as real competition to the state-owned.
June 6 2008, Source: sofiaecho.com
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