The mandates of the previous rector, economist Vasile Ișan (2008-2016), were riddled with financial restrictions and a series of austerity measures, amid the global economic crisis. Toader was seen by Iași university students as a “good manager”, with a reputation earned as a judge of the Constitutional Court and in his three terms as dean of the Faculty of Law at UAIC.
In the period immediately following, Toader’s managerial decisions would disappoint. First of all, he did not spend even a year at the head of the university, being elected minister of justice in the Grindeanu cabinet in 2017. He remained in the government until April 2019, during which two prime ministers succeeded each other: Mihai Tudose and Viorica Dancila.
He returned to the head of the UAIC, where he had suspended his post, just in time to prepare the electoral campaign in order to win the second mandate.
At the beginning in 2020, with some of the same promises he made in 2016, but with the “legacy” of being minister of justice in three of the governments that threatened the existence of the rule of law in Romania.
However, his two terms at the head of the university left an important mark in the history of the oldest higher education institution in Romania.
Beloved by academics: raised salaries considerably
One of the most pressing problems in 2016 at UAIC, a year considered “good” economically for Romanian universities, was the payment of teachers’ work.
Teaching staff are remunerated both through the amount collected on the employment contract, according to the grids approved at the national level, with various increments and bonuses, as well as from supplementing the activity with hours held under the “hourly payment” regime.
As mentioned in the management plan of the candidate who won the elections in 2024, the economist Liviu Maha, the university from Iași “boasts” itself with one of the most burdensome norms per teaching staff in the country. This means that there are few teachers who necessarily cover all teaching needs. What exceeds the norm in the employment contract is paid in the “hourly payment” regime.
For some teaching staff, especially those at the beginning of their career – assistants or heads of works, the hours held in the “hourly payment” regime are at least as many as those in the standard norm.
When Toader came to head the UAIC, the situation was critical from this point of view: at some faculties, the fees for hourly payment were either not paid, or the beneficiaries received ridiculous amounts, of several tens of lei per month for tens of hours provided.
It was a policy of the old management, which divided the faculties into “rich” and “poor”; those who had their own income from student fees or other activities also paid for the activity by the hour, the others not or very little.
In the first year of Toader’s arrival, the situation was remedied: the cataloging of faculties was eliminated, a maximum salary cap was established (at the lecturer level), and all university employees were paid.
It’s just that Toader’s success later became normal. In 2016, the basic funding for universities started from a calculation of around 2,500 lei/student. Currently, the amount is three times higher, easily covering even the salary increases in education in recent years.
“The Master of Tabulations”
Ironically, several articles written by professors from the university recommended Tudorel Toader to withdraw from the race for the position of rector and to hire an advisor in urban planning at the university, to deal with the land domain and tabulations.
The reality is that, when Toader came to the leadership of the university, even the main building bodies of the university were not fully tabulated. The Botanic Garden not so much, and there were lawsuits upon lawsuits, many still ongoing, where the heirs of the old owners are tearing up pieces of the garden’s protected areas in court, with final decisions.
Without the tabulations made on the university’s properties, including at the level of the research stations that the UAIC has throughout the country, there was no room for discussion for the implementation of any development project, because the necessary legal framework did not exist. In fact, the preoccupation with the university’s heritage became an obsession for the former rector, which he later boasted about in the election campaigns, questioning his opponents: where were you when I was fighting for the university’s heritage?
And here are some notable objectives completed in the eight years, with the mention that it is difficult to determine exactly how much was the merit of Rector Toader and how much would not have been achieved anyway, along the lines of funding, especially from the National Investment Company. UAIC managed to rescue the “Casa Universitarilor” from ruin, which it regained in court and then renovated, turning it into a restaurant for the academic community and its guests.
During Toader’s tenure, a central body of the university was also rehabilitated, which had been unused for almost 10 years – a heritage building, a former prison, which had been closed because it was unsafe, the halls being full of rats and rat poison.
Even before the election campaign for the second term, Toader inaugurated another building that was about to collapse. Another notable investment is the Astronomical Observatory, the only one in Iași, where new equipment was bought and the building renovated, being also open to the general public.
However, there are also many projects left in the drawer, part of what is now criticized as the “difficult legacy” – among the constructions that have no chance of completion is an Olympic pool on a plot of land in the Copou area. There is also a multi-storey car park in the design stage, which would be built behind the university headquarters.
He led “from the shadows” and while he was a minister
The first vocal criticism aimed at the former rector appeared after Toader accepted to occupy the seat of Minister of Justice. Self-suspended from the position of head of UAIC, Toader often appeared in images of interviews he gave from the rector’s office in Iași, and Libertatea sources confirmed that, often, on weekends, limited meetings of the board of directors took place in the presence and under the coordination of Toader.
His flagship projects, such as the Casa Universitarilor, sat in the drawer for a long time while he was gone: started in 2016, the building was completed six years later, in 2022. Basically, the campaign for a second term found the current rector without a completed heritage project, although he undertook it several times, on several occasions.
The 2020 campaign was a fiasco: with no genuine challenger and general community disapproval, there were over 100 null votes and a record negative turnout of under 80%.
He removed his men who raised him
The former university chancellor has been accused many times of becoming paranoid and alienating people who have been close to him or who have supported him over the years.
For example, although most of the rectors reaching their second or third term have mostly the same team of vice-rectors, Tudorel Toader has remained with only one vice-rector since 2016: Prof. Dr. Ionel Mangalagiu, who is in charge of the research area and about which Libertatea sources say was one of the least appreciated in the academic community. The same sources explain, however, that he always had the quality of being loyal to the rector in all circumstances.
One by one, the vice-chancellors appointed in the first term were removed, some through various tricks not undertaken by the rector, others by reaching retirement age and automatic removal from the leadership position. Notorious was the case of Prof. Dr. Cătălin Tănase, who was, unpaid, also director of the Botanical Garden for 11 years, before Toader took over the rectorship, and whom the former minister of justice tried to remove including from that position.
And they pushed vice-rectors Corneliu Iațu and Mihaela Onofrei to resign two months before the elections, when Mihaela Onofrei announced that she would run against him. They reproached him, in an internal e-mail, that there is an incompatibility between the position of vice-rector and that of a candidate for the position of rector, and to Iațu – that he supports it. He revoked both of their signature rights and then they resigned.
A big stain on the image of the university
The national and international damage to the university’s image has been claimed by various UAIC teaching staff since 2020. Toader was accused of breaking solid institutional ties between the universities of Iași. During the time of rector Dumitru Oprea, more than 15 years ago, there were discussions related to a possible merger of the universities in Iasi, under the umbrella of UAIC. Eight years ago, during the term of rector Vasile Ișan, there were joint meetings of the senate and the board of directors between the UAIC and the Technical University “Gheorghe Asachi” from Iasi. Toader’s arrival, however, broke these ties.
First of all, Libertatea sources explain that Toader was seen by the other four rectors in Iasi, most often, as “the most equal among equals”, especially in discussions and joint projects. If at the national level, the university continued to be relevant in scientific circles and in national and European coalitions, at the local level, the situation reached a historic low.
In the rush to secure the university’s heritage, Toader sued Politehnica, to recover half of the historical building in Copou, which, he claims, belongs to UAIC. Then he also sued Agronomy for the recovery of the land and the building where they developed the most popular canteen in Iasi. He lost in all three terms, but Toader took the case all the way to the High Court of Cassation and Justice.
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After losing the elections to the economist Liviu Maha, the former minister of justice will not leave the rector’s office without leaving him a “gift”. He scheduled the meeting of the Universitaria in Iași consortium, made up of the largest generalist universities in the country, one month earlier: on April 19, compared to May, when it was normally scheduled.
Practically, four days after the new rector will officially assume his mandate, he and the newly appointed team of vice-rectors will have to discuss with their counterparts from the largest universities in Romania about public policies and the governance of the education system.
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