ANOSR contests the new methodology for the QA assessment of doctoral studies

The National Alliance of Student Organisations in Romania (ANOSR) is highly concerned about the new form of the methodology for the quality assurance (QA) assessment of the doctoral schools adopted by the Ministry of National Education. The Current version jeopardises the entire evaluation process. The newly adopted methodology vitiates the process of evaluating doctoral schools and further endangers the credibility of higher education institutions.

This new methodology is devoid of legitimacy, cancelling a methodology with the same regulatory object, adopted in November of 2018. The previous methodology has undergone a broad consultation and debate process with representatives of theNational Council of Rectors (CNR), the Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance of Higher Education (ARACIS) and with the student representatives (ANOSR). On the opposite, the new methodology was not debated either agreed by any stakeholder. Since the autumn of 2016, all doctoral schools in Romania are provisionally authorised, this measure being arbitrary taken since the legal deadline for the evaluation of doctoral schools had expired.

One alarming aspect is the elimination of the involvement of international experts from the evaluation committees of doctoral studies, extremely important in the context where there are multiple problems about how the doctoral schools are connected to the international academic environment.

ANOSR also expresses its concern that representatives of the academia have not publicly pronounced themselves against the new methodology.

“It is incomprehensible why the methodology has been changed to the ground when no one in the education system or outside of it has requested it. With this new methodology, the QA assessment of doctoral studies will become a mere reporting process without any real value.” Petrișor-Laurențiu Țucă, President of ANOSR