An Integrity System for the Romanian Higher Education

23 – 25 November 2011Presenter: Daniela Marinache

The Coalition for Clean Universities

Who are we?

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Context

Romania was ranked 70th in the world, according to the 2008 Corruption Perception Index (Transparency International), being the most corrupt country of the EU new member states.

Universities as “diploma factories” (competencies, not just diplomas)

77% of the students and 35% of the teaching staff consider that the level of corruption in Romanian universities is high.

50% of students and 28% of teaching staff from public universities know that in their department there are professors who receive money/gifts from their students.

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Main starting problem

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What is our concept?

Mapping out the problems of integrity that exist in the Romanian higher education system

Classify the most stringent problems in 4 categories: Transparency and administrative fairness Academic fairness Governance quality Financial management practices

Building support of stakeholders (governmental actors, Teaching Staff’s Union, ARACIS, National Council of Rectors)

Pilot the methodology on 5 Romanian Universities

Adapt and extend the evaluation on 42 public universities5

Questionnaire

What did we measure?Transparency and administrative fairness

Academic fairnessGovernance

qualityFinancial

management practice

Documents requested on the basis of Law 544/2001 (activity reports, internal rules and regulations, income and expense budgets, wealth statements, rules and regulations of admissions/final exams, lists of patents/inventions, ISI publications, etc.)

Existence of rules and procedures to combat plagiarism

Number of ISI papers per doctoral school

The academic process (classes)

How the appeal committees for admissions/final exams work

Open access to vacancies

Nepotisms

Student participation in decision making

Academic performance of staff (ISI papers)

How merit-based salary supplements are rewarded

How subsidies are spent

Randomly check public procurements documents

If wealth and interests statement pose any suspicions or are justified

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Scores

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42 universities Total points

Mean Comments

Transparency and administrative fairness

30p. 20,2p

Only 38% of universities are transparent with regard to administration

Only 16 universities have wealth and interests statements published and updated

Academic fairness 20p. 12p.

71% of universities have cases of plagiarism

Governance quality 35p. 10p.

In 57% of universities, governance

quality is lower than the mean that is

already low enough

Financial management 15p. 8,8p.

41% of cases stand below average,

17% of cases is equal to the average

42% are above average.

Project results

Education section on the on-line platform www.romaniacurata.ro

- Access to resources (integrity studies, CCU)

- Forum for reporting academic irregularities (election of the university management)

- RAS intermediates justified complains and irregularities to the education lawyer (juridical assistance)

- RAS sends the cases reporting integrity issues to the press (visibility to the stakeholders and public)

- 0 universities received 5 *

- 3 universities received 4 *

- 18 universities received 3*

- 10 universities received 2*

- 5 universities received 1*

- 6 universities received 0*8

Value Added

• First university ranking ever done in Romania

• Mechanism of publishing and receiving juridical assistance for corruption cases in universities

• It opened for debate the issue of integrity in the Romanian state universities

• Concrete measures implemented by universities regarding their transparency level (ex. posting wealth and interests statements)

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Media impact

• Visibility in the most important newspapers and in TV shows (public and private televisions)

• Recommendation regarding the need to increase mechanisms of control was further mentioned in the 2008 EC Report (EC report-supporting document, SEC(2008) 2349/2, p. 14).

• The CCU evaluation and recommendations were successively mentioned by the World Bank Report (2010): Skills, not just diplomas, p. 146-156

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Policy relevance

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Project recommendations Policy echoes (Law 1/2011)

1. Necessity to increase mechanisms of accountability and control

2. Funding criteria on performance, link between funding and the quality of education and research.

3. Clear regulations on conflict of interests, incompatibilities and family relations in subordinated positions

4. The weak role of students and other stakeholders in the quality evaluation and quality assurance of education

1. Art. 121 – establishes mechanisms of ministry control and university accountability

2. 30% of funding delivered on performance + strong accent on research + financial incentives

3. New system of incompatibilities for members in university boards

4. Clear regulations regarding the participation of students in university evaluations and decision-making

Next steps…

A new CCU university evaluation?

The higher education reform has partly included CCU recommendations into laws. -How are the universities putting them into practice?-How is the new autonomy-accountability mechanism settled in practice?

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Thank you for your attention!

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