Abstract
This paper works with the assumption that higher education funding mechanisms generate a set of incentives, behavioural patterns and specific institutional processes (i.e. at university level) that are pivotal both for the understanding and the management of an education system. Given its importance, it is one of the key reform tools in higher education reform processes. Our key argument is that many of the changes that may be identified in the behaviour of public universities, be that related to student flows, staff recruitment and promotion, organisational structures and their governance and management, could be traced back to the incentives and constraints provided by the funding mechanism in use. We shall focus here only on one example, the Romanian case. This case may be of interest by considering a comparative analysis of funding mechanisms with respect to their intended and unintended consequences and to the institutional dynamics they set in motion (e.g., the traditional and various types of formula-based allocations). The paper presents various elements of evidence in this respect, while finally presenting elements of a new funding mechanism, meant to forge an institutionally differentiated system of higher education.
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Notes
- 1.
For analytical purposes the budgetary funds used to cover the personnel expenses can be conceptualised as a common-pool resource (Ostrom et al. 1994). The increase in the number of teaching and non-teaching positions resulted at the end of the 1990s in the ‘overgrazing’ of the budget. In many respects the introduction of the new, formula-based funding mechanism could be seen as a response to the coordination problems raised in this framework.
- 2.
In 2006 the National Council for Academic Evaluation and Accreditation was replaced by another institution: the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ARACIS).
- 3.
However, the State authorities maintained a powerful instrument to influence universities: the Ministry of Education strictly controls the student flows, in that it establishes the number of State-supported students in each field and for each university. This entails that the Ministry of Education retains the control on the size of university budgetary funding. It is important to add that for more than a decade, under all cabinets, there were no transparent criteria for establishing the number of State-supported students each university is allowed to enrol. In this respect, the discretionary power of Ministry officials was retained.
- 4.
The Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest offers a stark example. In 1997 it enrolled a number of about 21,500 State-supported students. However, as soon as the university was in a position to enrol students who paid their fees, the number of State-supported students decreased. In 1999, their number was less than 16,000, while the number of students who paid their tuition fees reached more than 5,800. Two years later the number of self-paying students increased to nearly 15,500.
- 5.
There are more reasons why the number of students enrolled in bachelor programmes decreased. First, we have demographic trends; secondly, the Bologna system reduced the length of bachelor programmes (usually with about two semesters). But in this period the number of students enrolled in master programmes increased very much.
- 6.
We refer to the 2010 allocations (CNFIS 2009).
- 7.
University management was measured by taking into account 14 simpler indicators.
- 8.
The process of institutional isomorphism also characterizes other educational systems (Birnbaum 1983; Morphew 2009). A similar process can be met when we move across national boundaries: as argued in Dobbins and Knill (2009), the Bologna process brings about institutional isomorphism across European higher education systems.
- 9.
- 10.
It is worth noting that in the past decade the formula-based funding mechanism was implemented in such a way so that changes in the size of allocations from the state budget were always incremental.
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Miroiu, A., Vlasceanu, L. (2012). Relating Quality and Funding: The Romanian Case. In: Curaj, A., Scott, P., Vlasceanu, L., Wilson, L. (eds) European Higher Education at the Crossroads. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3937-6_41
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