252
INFORMATION LITERACY AND ROMANIAN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM
Bologna principles have stimulated universities to restructure their curricula to align them with the real needs of society. The majority of European countries are currently adjusting university curricula in line with the Bologna Process principles.
1. Education reform in Romania
In Romania education reforms have been going on since the overthrow of the Ceausescu regime in 1989 and the country's transition to a market-based economy. However, these reforms have progressed relatively slowly and their objectives have changed over the years.
Before 1989, the education system in Romania was heavily centralized and politicized, as it was the case of the other socialist countries. This was even more visible within the tertiary education system, where ali academics were members of the Communist Party, which controlied every aspect of education. Ali decisions, including the management of current activities in universities, were made by the Ministry of Education.
Reforms began almost immediately in the early 1990s but progressed slowly. As a response to the restricted number of students granted admission to tertiary education under the socialist system, the number of higher education institutions increased dramatically. Like in other ex-communist countries, in Romania we witnessed shifts in demand for the different fields of study: law studies, social and economie sciences, humanities became popular, as the technical fields such as mining, chemical engineering and metallurgy faced a serious decrease in enrollment requests. Though the legai framework was incomplete, and the accreditation regulations were quite unclear, the emergence of new private providers of tertiary education was spectacular.
We can identify several phases or the higher education reform in Romania.
The period from 1990 to 1993 was characterized by measures with immediate reparatory objectives in education. The main objectives of legai measures were intended to depoliticize the curricula, to reintroduce fields of study, such as sociology and business, which were suppressed under the communist regime, and to improve working conditions for teachers. The actions taken in this first phase were not long-term oriented, lacked coherence and did not change significantly the nature of supply in higher education.
The second phase, 1993-1997, was driven by the need of change in the legai framework in education and improvement of managerial practices at ali