CONCURENȚA LA ADMITEREA ÎN ÎNVĂȚĂMÂNTUL SUPERIOR ROMÂNESC ÎN PERIOADA COMUNISTĂ (1956-1979). RECONSTITUIRI CANTITATIVE
ENTRANCE COMPETITION IN THE ROMANIAN HIGHER EDUCATION DURING COMMUNISM (1956-1979). QUANTITATIVE RECONSTRUCTIONS

Summary/Abstract: This research analyses the admission to higher education with a focus on competition, in an attempt to better explain the dynamics of enrolment in socialist Romania. In a system that exercised a tight control on the annual number of study places and which prioritized its particular goals – mainly industrialization – youth had to compete on official figures structured accordingly. The lack of market mechanisms of distribution gave way to very high competition rates in fields that had little economic relevancy and therefore presented a shortage of places, such as: law, history, philosophy, medicine, sociology, arts. In other words, traditionally intellectual professions were subjected to bottlenecks. In general, technical (including agronomical) specializations, with few exceptions (high-end fields: architecture, aeronautics, automatics, telecommunication), had a competition below average; whilst university and medicine studies – with smaller numbers of places – had competition levels above the national average. The historical evolution of competition levels was influenced by quantitative changes in the secondary education system – expansion and post-1975 focus on industrial profiles –, on one hand, and the stagnation or shrinking of higher education admission figures – along with the growing numbers of secondary education graduates –, on the other. There were also geographical variations and the most spectacular rise in competition occurred in Iași since the middle 1970s. Overall, high competition rates were maintained and even augmented because of the contingency of higher education offers to the economical and political demands of the regime. The optimal educational spending and the maximal use of workforce in a state-economy, as well as social engineering policies, were more crucial for the regime than the sole professional tendencies of Romania’s youth.

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