A conference on the future of technical universities, organized by the former Minister of Education, Mircea Miclea, took place on Friday in Cluj-Napoca, with two professors present at the event, one from UTCN – Dan Micu and one from the Politehnica University of Timișoara – Attila Simo.
Miclea spoke about how he sees the future of these higher education institutions, but he also referred to the pressures made for a professor from Bucharest not to participate in the conference.
It showed that the future is a construction and it depends on the people what it will look like.
Changes are needed
“The future of technical universities can be better through the ideas we have. (…) There are many things that must be changed in the culture of technical universities, the first being the transition from academic indifference to a culture of assuming responsibility, of involvement.
The latest articles on Cluj24
This indifference means withdrawing into the niche of one’s own discipline, so that we become indifferent to what is happening in other disciplines, with quality and processes elsewhere.
The effect is that excellence, instead of being a mechanism to scale excellence, remains only the result of individual enterprises.
If we were not indifferent, we would create a mechanism at the institutional level to replicate excellence”, Miclea said.
The need for collaboration
According to him, such a mechanism does not exist, and a change at the university level should also aim at this aspect.
Also, the transition should be made to a culture of collaboration instead of university tribalization, but also to collaboration with the economic environment, which is extremely limited.
Ring kissing culture
Prof. Radu Porumb, from the National University of Science and Technology Politehnica Bucharest, was also invited to the event, who, however, did not arrive in Cluj, apparently due to pressure from the current management of UTCN.
Referring to these pressures on the professor from Bucharest not to participate in the event, Mircea Miclea said that universities should move from a culture of submission to one of courage.
“Unfortunately, professional competence does not correlate with ethical verticality. There are many situations where competent, ethically intelligent people are deplorable.
The culture of courage
They are afraid, they obey all kinds of indications, opportunism. I also know what happened in relation to this event, speaking of the pressures. Is this a culture of compliance? Whence this compliance in the academic environment, of submission? (…)
This culture of ring kissing, submission, opportunism will not produce a better future for technical universities, on the contrary.
We need to move to a culture of courage, where a group takes responsibility for saying what needs to be said and making the decisions that need to be made that will bring about change.
(…) A group must appear that understands that it will be the bearer of change and will make the change”, concluded Mircea Miclea.
The international dimension of the university
Prof. Dr. Eng. Dan Micu from UTCN, with a 25-year teaching and research career and who has taught at universities in Europe, the USA and China, declared for his part that he produced a document of tens of pages about how he sees the future of technical universities.
He spoke about the quality of education and research, but also about the diversification of the educational offer and globalization, stating that universities can no longer remain at the local or regional level, but move to the international level.
“Let’s focus on quality, not quantity, on essence.
The curriculum must be updated and we must make it flexible and accessible, there must be a focus on the student, and the economic environment must be with us, there must be attractiveness”, said Micu.
Changing teaching style
He also advocated the need to change the teaching style of teachers to students, keeping in mind the audience and the current generation.
“In one year I taught one semester in the USA, half a semester in China and came to Romania.
I changed my course 3 times because it wasn’t the same auditorium, although I was teaching the same subject”, stated Dan Micu.
