Baccalaureate bribes and Funeriu's word

Baccalaureate bribes and Funeriu's word

"The word of a minister is winning against bribery". In a normal place, after saying that, the Minister of Education, whomever he or she may be, would have had to throw on their ministerial desk dozens, no, hundreds of orders removing principals, loads of files resulting from school inspector investigations, and draft bills to eliminate pseudo-universities with their business like headquarters. But that is not the case for Mr. Daniel Funeriu, who in the absence of anything better is resorting to just throwing words at an educational system that is waiting for the final blow to bring it down. Funeriu's word wasn't even able to defeat the inertia of his party colleagues in the Senate, that left for the autumn session the law the minister's been using to "scare" the sickest educational system in all of Europe. So, in that case, what word, what "zero tolerance" to bribes is Mr. Funeriu talking about? Copying abounded at this year's baccalaureate, in the good tradition of the complicity between the student unable to comprehend a text seen for the first time, and the professor sick of his own living standards. The spectacular twelve percent drop in the number of students passing the baccalaureate has nothing to do with the relevance bump the exam received with replacing oral tests with competency exams, or with the so-called conscience teachers supposedly developed by inhaling the reformist winds of our young Minister, untainted by the filth of our local universities.

The weakest baccalaureate result of the last eight years can only be explained through the lack of learning of a generation taught that learning doesn't do any good, as well as the clear reaction of professors, whose 25% reduced wages make it much more difficult for them to see anything in pink when they're grading papers. The fact that one in three baccalaureate candidates didn't graduate this summer is, however, closer to the reality present in schools. It would be natural for the number of those passing it to drop constantly over the next few years so that it stabilizes at around 60%, like it is in countries that have a performing educational system. And, eventually, for that percentage to rise naturally, as a reaction to easing the curriculum.

Until then, the Romanian mechanism of obtaining diplomas also continues with enviable adaptability in higher learning institutions. This was seen and proved again just two days after the high school scandals. At "Hyperion" University, 33 students that three years ago probably negotiated passing the baccalaureate, struck a deal with their professors for their final university examination, and managed to set a fixed tariff: 1500 Euro. Here, even more than for schools targeted by SWAT teams looking for bribes, the minister seems a simple spectator cheering from the sidelines, asking that prosecutors be mobilized. No word of dismissing the rector, not even a hint of reevaluating the university's accreditation. Just the findings that you can buy your degree straight from your professor, and not only online, together with an "administrative inquiry" that will have zero results. If as far as baccalaureate bribes are concerned the ministry can have as a silent excuse the fact that it closes its eyes to what is happening so that high school graduates move on to university studies, when final university examinations are being paid for looking the other way can have no other motive but sheer incompetence. More so, seeing as the solutions have already been served to the ministry on a silver platter. The question is: will Daniel Funeriu have the guts to at least draft a merging of universities and eliminate the centers that do nothing else except for copyright theft and printing diplomas that have no real life support, or will he always resort to empty words in which, most likely, he himself has no faith in?

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