Academia resists clean-up in Romania
By Liviu Giosan

Nature, 472, 295
Date published:(21 April 2011)

A law to reform Romania’s education system, approved in February (Nature 469, 142–143; 2011), is already floundering. University staff seem willing to compromise their academic standards when it comes to political matters.

The law bans members of parliament from holding positions of power in universities. But even as the government is busy defining the law’s regulations, parliamentarian university rectors from across all the political parties are insisting that the law should not apply to them because they were elected to parliament before the legislation came into effect.

Legal committees of both houses of the Romanian parliament decreed in February that there should be no incompatibility between academic functions and parliamentary positions. But the ministry of education intends to ask the National Integrity Agency, which controls corruption and mismanagement in government, to investigate. Rectors enjoy extra financial benefits when they become parliamentarians, and have the power to maintain the status quo in Romania’s inbred, nepotistic and underperforming university system.

To disrupt this system, the next generation of academics needs to be out-bred. External reviewers from academically advanced European Union countries should play a part in overseeing promotions and funding in Romanian universities.