Abstract
The international visibility of Romanian universities is relatively weak, even when compared with neighboring countries. This is explained by the historical heritage of the former communist regime and the lack of a clear vision for a post-communist strategic policy that could guide the research enterprise. This study examined whether the higher education reforms launched in 2011 had an effect on the research output, impact and international visibility of Romanian universities. The researchers used bibliometric data and university ranking data from ARWU, THE and QS Rankings. Trends in aggregate bibliometric indicators were analyzed for 38 universities as a whole, and by type of institution. Additionally, the Theil index was utilized to measure the degree of concentration of the research output across three institutional types. The findings reveal that there was significant growth in research output during the first years following the 2011 Education Law. However, this growth could not be sustained beyond 2014, except for Teaching & Research Universities and medical universities. This suggests that the reforms are producing the expected results at institutions that implemented and enforced new evaluation systems heavily oriented toward research.
Highlights
Both peer-reviewed articles and national and international reports abound with examples of the impact of structural reforms in education and research on the development of universities
The growth rate for the number of citations per article was higher than the growth rate for the number of articles, it remained inferior to the average growth experienced by universities in other countries, which explains the decline of Romanian universities in international rankings, after 2013
The higher education reforms in Romania initiated by the 2011 Education
Summary
Both peer-reviewed articles and national and international reports abound with examples of the impact of structural reforms in education and research on the development of universities. Following the 1989 Revolution, Romania began to reintegrate its political, economic, social and cultural systems into those of the larger European family. In this transition process, the higher education system was considered to have a key role in developing a research enterprise on par with those of other European nations. The Romanian research system is heavily concentrated in public universities; historically, these universities have had relatively poor performance in international rankings
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