Despite the lack of a national strategy in this department, the quality of the Romanian education – especially of its medical schools, has attracted more and more students to local universities, who pay several thousand euros in tuition a year. The export of educational services could therefore become a sizeable stream of revenue for the state budget if the government were to create a strategy to boost the number of foreign students to 100,000 a year for instance.
“Foreign students choose Romania because the quality of the Romanian medical schools is considered suitable for practicing medicine anywhere in the world. Moreover, the EU citizens, once having studied in Romania can continue their education or practice medicine if they graduated anywhere in the European Union because of the academic degree recognition by EU directive,” explains Professor Andrei Achimas, Ph.D., with the Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca.
About 20,800 foreign students, most of whom from the Republic of Moldova, Israel, France, Italy and Tunisia are enrolled in Romanian universities, according to the latest National Statistics Institute data (2013). The number of foreign nationals who come to Romania to get their college degree has been rising constantly over the past decade, and is 2.3 times higher than in 2004, despite the birth rate decline after the nineties leading to a decline in the total number of students in Romania as of 2009 (when the kids born in 1990) started college. At the same time, 5,000 Romanian students to go college abroad every year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)