Article 133, paragraph 4 of the proposal to the new law intended for higher education states: “The term of office of the rector is 5 years. A person cannot hold the position of rector of one higher educational institution for an unlimited number of terms. The number of mandates is established in the university statute.”

If I were chancellor (or even worse, president, ousted, of the National Council of Rectors) and wanted to lobby for the position, I would first resign.

The wording is a bit ambiguous (can someone have unlimited tenure at another educational institution?), but I think the “Supreme Director” does a pretty good job of using marketing to distract from the elephant in the living room. This paragraph immediately reminded me of the famous ad for yogurts that contain bifidus (all of them!). It is obvious that even here the number of mandates cannot be unlimited, since people (in reality) live no more than 120 years. We can also go into the distortion I was talking about, but we still have a very clear conflict of interest. If I were chancellor (or worse, president, ousted, of the National Council of Chancellors) and wanted to lobby for the position, I would first resign because self-interested legislation is not a good option.

On the other hand, even the country that many consider to have the most consolidated democratic system – I mean, of course, the USA – after the moment when someone managed to break tradition and serve more than two terms as president, introduced (in 1951 ) constitutional amendment that expressly limits it. In other countries with less or no consolidated democracies (such as Russia or Belarus), the duration and/or number of mandates has been extended.

Instead of taking the example of a country like the USA, we are moving towards a directed university democracy, the original Russia and Belarus.

The proposal put out for public discussion (after previous changes) shows us beyond any doubt that instead of taking an example from a country like the USA, we are moving towards a directed university democracy, original from Russia and Belarus. Obviously, if our universities had a sufficiently consolidated democracy, they could legislate additional restrictions through university statutes. If we look at the proportion of universities that artificially achieved the results of a person with more than two mandates or those that had unique candidates, we quickly notice that we do not have many universities with a consolidated democracy.

Article published the other day the recent history of regulations related to this topic is presented. Based on this idea, below I present how this issue has been regulated in the specialized legislation of Romania over the past 158 ​​years. It helped a lot in my research specialized legislative collection available on the website of the former Institute of Pedagogical Sciences. Relevant excerpts from the following legislative acts are given in the table below.

The law of 1864 (implemented, therefore, during Kuza’s time) provided for Art. 294 rector’s term of office for 4 years with the possibility of re-election/re-election (no term limits) This was the rule in force for over 35 years.

Under Charles I, the Act of 1898, amended and reissued in 1900, reduced the Rector’s term of office to 3 years, leaving the provision for unlimited re-election/re-appointment. In 1912, the duration of the 3-year mandate is preserved, but a limitation of two consecutive mandates appears. This provision is valid for 20 years.

During the first term of office of King Michael I of Romania in 1932, the term of office of rectors was extended to 5 years, but the limitation of two consecutive terms remains. During the second mandate of the same king, in 1942, the rectors’ mandates are reduced to 3 years, but any reference to the number of mandates disappears.

With the establishment of the communist regime in 1948, a reform takes place, according to which any provision concerning the method of election/appointment of university rectors or the number of their mandates disappears. This discretionary, no-rules approach lasted for 20 years until 1968, when the rector’s term was set at 4 years with no term limits. After 10 years, in 1978, the duration of the mandate of 4 years is preserved, but their number is limited to two consecutive ones. Among school principals, the provision was similar, but accompanied by the phrase “as a rule”, a phrase that was not present in the case of rectors. A similar award was given to the rector, vice-rectors, deans and vice-deans, heads of departments.

What we want to implement in the new legislative regulation of universities is a return (without any arguments or grounds) to the situation of 90 years ago.

Provisions introduced during the latter part of the communist regime were also retained in the 1995 law. The only semantic difference (but which does not change the normative meaning) is the use of the word consistent instead of consistent.

In 2011, in elegant and unambiguous terms, the duration of the mandate is kept at 4 years, while the effective duration of mandates is limited to 8 years. Through the tricks introduced in the 2014 reformulation, an unlimited number of incomplete mandates were given legal power.

What we want to implement in the new legislative regulation of universities is a return (without any arguments or grounds) to the situation 90 years ago, which worked for 10 years (relative to the term of office). As for not limiting the number of mandates, apart from delivering an ex cathedra-style message with arithmetic distortions, Romanian university institutions are not democratically consolidated enough not to follow the path of Belarus or Russia. Rather, we need to balance according to the model of the United States of America.

Author’s note: the first part of the title is obviously taken from the lyrics of Alexandru Andries’ song: Şefu’

N. ed.: Claudio Herceliou is Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Cybernetics and PhD Coordinator at the Department of Statistics and Econometrics of the Academy of Economic Studies (ASE),