Romanian Universities miss top 500 but could grow with mentoring from higher rank schools, Australian academic says

The recently – released top 500 Universities in the World didn't include any Romanian university, but local universities could improve their ranking in the future, says James Moulder, a retired business school academic from Melbourne, Australia. He believes that an establishment of mentoring and coaching relationships with foreign universities of higher rank can be a solution. "It would assist them to acquire more demanding benchmarks in these areas” he says. His advice to the Romanian academics is to share knowledge with foreign academics and to be willing to learn things they believe they already know, thus, enabling them to be ahead of their Romanian counterparts in the university ranking game. James Moulder's idea consists in a kind of reward given to both low and high ranking universities for their willingness to transfer knowledge. This recipe is already used by the Faculty of International Business and Economics within the Economics Study Academy in Bucharest (ASE), which has already built this kind of relationships with a highly ranked foreign university, the Faculty of Business and Economics within Australia's Monash University, which occupies the 61st place in the QS rankings. Some of the Monash academics already sustained lectures on different subjects for the Romanian ASE students, although only through telephone. "What is happening at the ASE demonstrates that the idea is viable. It also demonstrates that nobody needs any official permission to get going. Anyone who likes the idea can begin to implement it as soon as they commit to it", Moulder says. These incipient project is a "small beginnings in what could become a significant development" between Romanian academics and academics from other parts of the world. The University of Bucharest ranked between 500 and 550th place in the top of universities. The Babes – Bolyai University came in on the 601st position. The QS World University Rankings were released this year at the beginning of September, pointing out the growth of the European educational institutions compared to the dominating American ones. Unfortunately, Romanian universities did not go far in these charts, thus, being ranked between 500 and 550th place. The top positions in this year’s QS World University Rankings are occupied by Cambridge and Harvard. The QS Rankings are based on four broad areas that any university with world class aspirations needs to be strong in. These are: research, teaching, graduate employability and internationalization. In comparison with other ranking systems, QS has become a very sophisticated ranking service as it takes into account the most up to date academic and employment views and also reflects upon the student and parent aspirations. Therefore, a Romanian student must compete for jobs in an increasingly international competition both inside and outside the country. Alina Andriescu (alina@romania-insider.com)