New Law to Boost Competition among Bulgaria Universities

Bulgaria's Education Minister Ignatov (right) awarded Friday the Bulgarian participants in the mathematics Olympics that took place in the Phillipines. Photo by BGNES

A new set of measures including mergers of higher education institutions has been designed to increase the competition among Bulgarian universities.

Bulgaria’s Education Minister, Sergey Ignatov announced Friday that these changes would be included in the new Higher Education Act.

The primary idea of this change is that the universities are going to have common councils and united on the basis of their specialization.

The Bulgarian Minister of Education underlined that this is necessary in order to attract more professors from different areas and to improve the competitiveness of the universities.

Ignatov said 2015 will be hardest year for Bulgarian universities for demographic reasons as Bulgaria’s birthrate collapsed in the mid and late 1990s; this means that the schools are really going to be struggling to attract applicants. The Minister said, however, this situation would improve in the period before 2025.

Ignatov made it clear that the planned changes in the higher education system in Bulgaria would be based on the university structures abroad. Thus, during the first years of the higher education all the students would cover general subjects, and would specialize in their majors in the later phase of their studies.

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