Project: The impact of the Romanian higher education reform on the  university’s financial and academic management

Months

Activities

January, February, March 2002

1. Literature review of specific education literature

2. Secondary data collection about the higher education reform in Romania: collection of documents of MER and of published material

3. Contacting universities and getting access for case studies in two universities: Academy of Economic Studies, public university from Bucharest and the Romanian-American University, private university from Bucharest.

4. Forming the research team for conducting the case research (interviews and questionnaires)

5. Design of the research methodology for the case studies (interview guide for the in-depth interviews and development of the questionnaire)

April, May, June, July 2002

1.      Data collection for phase 1: case studies in two universities one private and one public. In both universities participated in the study 194 academic staff including managerial staff, of which 131 (86 in-depth interviews and 45 questionnaires) at the state university and 63 (41 in-depth interviews and 22 questionnaires) at the private university.

2.      Transcribing the 126 tapes of the 1 - 1.30 h long in-depth interviews.

August, September, October 2002

      1. Transcribing the 126 tapes of the 1 - 1.30 h long in-depth interviews.

2.Writing up the research paper on the evolution of highere ducation in Romania, on the methodology of the case studies and on tehr esults of the two case studies

3. Research trip to University of Kent, United Kingdom: 12 August – 3 September 2002

      4. Presentation of the results of the case studies in an open lecture at

      Academy of Economic Studies.

October, November, December 2002

1.      Based on the results of the case studies, a questionnaire was designed in order to conduct a national survey with both state and private universities.

2.      There were selected a number of 37 universities representing 1/3 of the total number of universities in Romania. Of these, 19 were state universities and 18 were private universities at which the management of universities and faculties were envisaged as respondents: rectors, vice-rectors, deans and vice-deans. The total number of potential repondents was 609 of which 423 from state universities and 186 from private universities.

3.      The questionnaires, letters of introduction and envelopes were printed and multiplied for all 609 potential respondents, as the national survey was organized by mail.

January, February, March, April  2003

1. Data collection in the survey was conducted in two phases

a.       January – mid February 2003, first round of mailing the 609 questionnaires. Responde rate was low of 5% (31 questionnaires were returned completed and a follow up was organized)

b.      March- mid-April 2003 the second round of mailing (follow up)  took place and questionaires were multiplied again and sent to the 580 respondents who did not answer at the first round. The total reponse rate was 15.9% with a total number of completed returned questionnaires of 97, of which 71 from state univrsities and 26 from private universities, representing a 16.7% reponse rate at state universities and a 13.9% response rate at the private universities.

April, May, June 2003

1.      Designing and programming the data base model for data introduction

2.      Cleaning and checking of data.

3. Completing the data base by introducing all data from all the questionnaires.

4. Computing and analysing the data.

June 2003

1. Writing up the research paper presenting the results of the national survey.

2. Writing up the research paper for the whole study.

3.  Sending the results  (the report) by mail to all respondents.

Future (probably October)

1.      Open lecture at Academy of Economic Studies to present the results of the whole study

2.      Open lecture at OSI-CEU Budapest.