The National Alliance of Romania's Student Organizations (ANOSR) criticizes the government's plans to introduce the possibility for tertiary education teachers to extend their tenure till the age of 70 upon their exclusive wish, as provides a bill approved by the government, and are asking Parliament to remove this provision.
ANOSR considers that the government's proposal to raise the upper retirement age represents "an additional brake on the modernization of universities".
"The federation's position on this issue is very clear and firm: the way the higher education system is currently organized, all higher education teaching staff should retire at the age of 65, as originally provided in the National Education Law. (...) In absence of actions regarding continuous quality training of teachers so as to ensure the improvement of teaching methods, the integration of new technologies and, as a corollary, compliance with student-centered education, the student is further ignored," the student federation argues, pointing out that the age limit of 65 encourages in the first place the access of young people to a university teaching career.
"The modernization of universities is without doubt done also by opening a career in higher education for young people with results, through competitive contests meant to attract the best potential candidates for both teaching and for doing research in higher education. Statistics provided by the Education Ministry show that the number of tenured university assistants decreased by 27 percent between 2015 and 2019, highlighting why the emphasis should be laid on encouraging entry into the system. Such a change would even more upset the professional path of the youth, who are left in the haze as to when they could be accepted into the profession," ANOSR explains.
In the opinion of the student federation, Parliament must correct this "obvious error" proposed by the government and turn its attention to other initiatives capable of bringing about an improvement in Romanian tertiary education.
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