THE CURRENT STATUS OF ACADEMIC EDUCATION FINANCING IN ROMANIA

At the moment academic education is imperative for any society based on knowledge or which tends to it. Academic education can be treated as the "engine" of the society development as it contributes to the individual development of citizens and the development of the community as a whole. Therefore, the amounts for academic education should not be treated as burdensome expenses, but as true long-term investments for the community development. However, the Romanian academic education funding has always been a sore spot and a highly controversial topic of debate for members of the political class and civil society. For a long time it has been searching for the optimal solutions in university funding as an essential lever for shaping and sustaining a high quality education system. Over time, academic education has been funded from multiple sources: not only from public funds and financial resources from individuals or companies, but also from its own resources. Although efforts have always been made to sustain academic education from public funds, the recent research in higher education funding reveals a decrease of the amounts allocated by the state. The economic and financial crisis has clearly made its mark even on public funding of state universities. In this pessimistic context, in order to carry out their missions, universities have been forced to find new sources of funding. In this paper we propose, by a persuasive presentation from a theoretical perspective, to illustrate key aspects of current funding of academic education in Romania. In this purpose we will analyze the funding mechanism for state universities and private universities and we will try to provide answers for the following questions: To what extent could the current system of financing academic education in Romania be improved and what can we do to improve it? Could new sources of funding be identified as to support the educational process?