In addition to rules, regulations and articles of law, Romanian education is nourished by a soil whose social fertility, related to “common utility” and abstract “common good”, arouses signs of wonder in the mind of the informed and interested average citizen. We all want something better than what we have, and no one would publicly state, without being fined by the general opinion, including the amorphous mass of Romanian civil society, that “there is no point in striving when there are so many enormous difficulties to overcome.” To reform is still the main verb in our country and will remain so for generations to come. We have so much to do as a society and as individuals that we often don’t even know where to begin. But if, after all, reform is only a hope, a dream, a chimera, and, eliminating good intentions, the playful demon of discursive change, based on plans and SWOT analysis, would push us into many rhetorical pirouettes that would leave us exactly where we started , indifferent to the general restless landscape? If real efforts to change reality are painful, especially when plans come true? If we have reached a dead end due to the fact that we have already achieved everything that is possible within the given framework? These are the guidelines we will follow in the process below.

Reading the article in the form of a final medical bulletin of the Romanian educational system[1] we find that statistics, however accurate they may be (and indeed they are), do not cover the difficult task of interpretation. We suggest that we can make a modest attempt at interpretation, subject to the inherent risk of making mistakes.

Critical criticism of Romanian scientists, valid in essence, is related to the mercantilism and intellectual mediocrity of the Romanian student. He comes to school with a degree that will quickly direct his career path and provide immediate results on the financial and time investment in education. On the one hand, local students complain that they are not learning something useful and directly applicable in their immediate professional activities, on the other hand, the “academic staff” complain, rightly, that the university is not, from the point of view of law and ethics, VET. It is not easy to get out of this contradiction. Do we make the university an assistant to the labor market, with the risk of a decrease in quality, or do we leave elite, thorough education that produces specialists, an education that works only in some places in our country? There are two issues here that are not discussed enough. The first focuses on the immediate utility of a university degree. To say that it does not matter where and what a graduate of higher education works in Romania is sociological blindness of a large social scale. Local universities should be obliged to make transparent, according to the Western model, the professional path that their graduates have 5, 10, 15, 20 years after graduation, and the general results should be considered by the public with maximum seriousness: how many former students and masters are working , what profession they have and what is their average income are elements that strengthen the reputation and public trust in the Romanian university environment. If we are not very interested in this question, which unfortunately happens, then we risk that the relevance of diplomas issued by universities will appear dubious, and the state budget, although most likely will be used wisely, will have the same social utility, like when we burn several suitcases of banknotes with large amounts issued by the National Bank. This creates a deflation of the accumulated symbolic capital of society, i.e. stagnation within existing values, overvalued in relation to the expansive dynamics of capitalist society, which seeks profits, not internal crises. However, universities can argue just as well that the labor market in Romania is sending strange signals in that the Romanian economy requires “cheap and unskilled labor” but does not want 50% of the active adult population to be actively employed. academic research, as in some developed countries of Europe. This is also the model of our economic policy, which the state, which cannot intervene in the market for fear of overturning the neoliberal market consensus (the one that “solves automatically and naturally” everything, thanks to the functioning of the divine ratio, although perfectly amenable to mathematical calculation, between supply and demand) , supports them with open arms. It is not the fault of academia that it has to adapt to the modest needs of a useful and active workforce in Romania. That’s how things go. In addition, it is quite possible that consistent statistical analysis will reveal, not necessarily surprising to anyone, that bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in Romania tend to be held by already employed students and that a significant proportion of these degrees, especially at the graduate school, to state employees who seek to consolidate their position at the workplace. Economics, in the applied sense, also means sociological research, as well as public policy, which corresponds to both the interests of employers and general social development. Autonomizing only the accounting component of companies as important for the Romanian economy risks becoming a zero-sum game in the medium and long term. Not surprisingly, the Romanian economic model has also reached its limits in the field of higher education, where the market is saturated with existing graduates. Without jobs, without investment with a satisfactory expected return, the university can also only shrink, as it has for a decade, and continue to award diplomas to a small percentage of high school graduates, some of whom are already enrolled and about to graduate. college. According to the laws of a market economy, the state cannot create empty jobs, because we no longer live in socialist centralized economies.

Speaking of the Romanian pre-university environment, especially in the case of vocational schools, the above situation is exactly repeated: the graduates of these schools must be “weighed, counted and divided” not only in the biblical sense, but also economically, through the detailed reports that will be presented to the general public as an integral part of the daily media debate on the subject. Assuming, strictly hypothetically, that 50% of the graduates of these educational institutions have a job unrelated to their studies or migrate abroad, a natural question arises, why and for what purpose are the investments of the Romanian state in these unprofitable forms of education in the market. How to make these schools socially useful? What can the state do for the pragmatic functioning of the economy? Reciprocity is equally important: how does the business environment contribute to the deep development of Romania? These are hot questions that risk generating diametrically opposed points of view with a high probability of ideological, if not last, but not least, social conflict. Considering how many technological and vocational high schools have woken up with locks on their doors in the last twenty years, or how many high schools are barely breathing in rural areas due to the demographic crisis in Romania (high level of economic immigrants, negative natural growth, hidden high unemployment, etc.), we asking rhetorically whether we want a pocket country, “unilaterally developed”, concentrated in a few properly industrialized urban centers, or whether we want a society in which population and territory are united in an economic network and lasting. A strong economy, where disharmony is minimized, brings with it functioning institutions and a state that exists for the benefit of the average citizen. Otherwise, the dysfunctional neoliberal paradigm in Romania risks being replaced by regressive nationalist paradigms and populist rematches with militarized elites, as in Putinist Russia. Unfortunately, there are no more reliable alternatives on the horizon. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro