ACTIVITY MID-TERM REPORT

LUMINITA NICOLESCU

OSI FELLOW 2002

 

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

 

Months

Activities

January, February, March

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

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 Academy of Economic Studies and 63 (41 in-depth interviews and 22 questionnaires) at the Romanian American University. Still data collection is in progress at its very final stages.

2.      Transcribing the 126 tapes of the 1 - 1.30 h long in-depth interviews. Still transcribing is in progress.

 

 

 

Attached to the activity report is a material containing:

-         an analysis of the evolution of higher education in Romania since 1990 including the reform of HE.

-         a description of the research methodology (up to present) including: general methodology of the study; methodology for the case studies; the description of the universities included in phase 1 the case studies research on the Academy of Economic Studies and The Romanian-American University; English version of the in-depth interview guide.

 

Difficulties:

- even though we used for the case studies personal interviewing (the data collection method generally with the highest response rate) as a collection method, we had a low response rate (so far) at the level of academic management (especially faculty management) in the public university. Given the fact that the second phase of the study will consist of a mail survey (know to generally have a lower response rate) with academic management at national level, there is a risk to encounter major data collection difficulties at that stage.