The demographic decline in Romania seems to have hit the education system as well. According to Sorin Cimpeanu, president of the National Council of Rectors in Romania, there will be less than 100,000 high school graduates with baccalaureate diploma in 2016.

“This is the first year after 1990 when the number drops below 100,000, and we had years with 200,000 graduates. It is a challenge and the local universities already feel it,” Cimpeanu said, reports local News.ro.

“I am coming from a university that has managed to fill in all the places for bachelor and master studies in the first days of admissions, but this has not happened in many universities in the country. And this will grow up to be a matter of quantity especially as we plan to have a certain percentage of university graduates by 2020, which is anyway far below what the European Union has proposed,” he added.

Education minister Mircea Dumitru also said that the demographic decline is affecting the education system in Romania, but this is a factor that neither the Ministry nor the universities can control at the moment.

Some 66.7% of the high school graduates in Romania who took the Baccalaureate exam this summer managed to pass it. Those who failed the exam can try again in the second session.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com