Academic protest over student seat cuts in Bucharest, banner reads: “Persecuted university”. Four universities on white armlet strike

Faculties of the University of Bucharest have displayed banners at all their entrances, in protest after the Education Ministry had announced major state-funded seat cuts last week. Messages of the banners read: “University persecuted by the Education Ministry”, or “Students are the future”.

The university representatives say students and professors made the banners.

The University of Bucharest has been on white armlet strike since Thursday over discontent against the number of the student places allotted by the ministry for the 2018-2019 academic year.

“The National Education Ministry has presented no objective criteria to allot the student seats to several universities and moreover, it had abusively replaced the members of the council that drafted the methodology on student seat allotment, which has been in public consultation from December 2017 to January 2018. The Education minister’s statement that the University of Bucharest was not supposed to receive a high level of confidence index has seriously affected the dignity of our academic community. We expect the minister to publicly apologize to those he had offended,” the university’s representatives said.

Three other universities in the country have joined the white armlet strike started by the University of Bucharest: “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University in Iasi, “Babes-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca and West University in Timisoara.