The education system in the Republic of Bulgaria

The degrees of education in our country are: preschool level (kindergartens), school level (primary, secondary and high school) and university level. According to Bulgarian law, school education until the age of 16 is generally mandatory. The transition from ‘basic education’ (the first eight years) to the so-called profiled high schools (i.e. the elite high schools) is done by a competition exam, while the general education high schools enroll students by their application documents only. From the general perspective, every child or young person wishing to continue their education must pass at least through two competition exams – the one for the high school and the one for the university. Depending on the applicants’ choices and abilities, the main emphasis falls on one of the competition exams. If they choose to apply to a profiled high school, then the road to the university will be relatively easier. But if they graduate from a general education high school, then their pre-application preparation to the university must be very serious. For us, the high school applicant preparation is not the final goal but a means for a more long-term and therefore more successful preparation to enter the university. Moreover that, according to the latest changes in Bulgarian law, the high school level education in Bulgaria will now mandatorily finish by taking state maturity exams, irrespective whether one is graduating in a profiled or a general education high school. State maturity exams, in their turn, have been recognized by the Academic Councils of many Bulgarian universities as entrance exams for some of the basic specialities in which these universities provide education. Therefore, the emphasis on high school education is more and more increasing. This is also one of the reasons for which it was precisely in 2008, when state maturity exams became mandatory, that we developed actively a separate program in our activity – the Applicant High School Student Preparation Program. However, as was already said, the role of this program is not a goal in itself. Our higher goal remains the enrolment of young Roma into universities. This is why in the next lines we provide a most general description of the structure and way of functioning of the system of higher education in the Republic of Bulgaria.

The higher education in Bulgaria is secular and independent of any ideologies, religions, or political doctrines. It is realized in correspondence with the universal human values and national traditions. In higher education, no privileges or restrictions are allowed if related to age, race, nationality, ethnicity, gender, social affiliation, political views or religion, with the exception of the cases explicitly stated in the Activity Regulations of the school of higher education in correspondence with the particularities of education and the future profession. Universities enjoy academic autonomy. It is the expression of the intellectual freedom of the academic community and the creative nature of the educational, research and artistic process as higher values. Academic autonomy includes academic freedoms, academic self-governing and the inviolability of the territory of the school of higher education.

The State, through the National Assembly, creates and closes down schools of higher education, and through the Council of Ministers it establishes the main directions of the national policy in higher education; it opens, transforms and closes faculties, institutes, branches and colleges in the state-owned schools of higher education; it adopts the state requirements for the acquisition of higher education by educational-qualificational degrees and unified state requirements for the so-called regulated professions (medicine, law, architecture etc..); it provides a yearly budget subsidy to every state-owned school of higher education and sets the number of students to be enrolled in each of them; it sets the amount of application and tuition fees in the state-owned schools of higher education.

The state institution that ‘takes care’ of higher education is the Ministry of Education and Science (MES). Unlike the case of high schools, it cannot intervene in the work of higher education institutions. The MES is a coordinator between them and the state. In that Ministry, all normative acts and documents are prepared that are necessary for the regulation of relations in higher education.

The school of higher education is a legal person whose object of activity is the preparation of specialists able to develop and apply scientific knowledge in the spheres of humanities, social, natural and technical sciences, as well as in the spheres of physical culture, arts, and national security. In the Republic of Bulgaria, by March 2008, there were 44 institutions if higher education, of which 36 state-owned and 8 private ones. The number of schools of higher education and colleges is quite big for a country like Bulgaria. With a population of 7.8 million (National Statistic Institute, 2003), there is one university and one college per 190000 citizens, which is a lot by all standards. The normal standard is believed to be a university per one million people. This means that, in taking into account the need for a higher education school as a cultural centre of the respective regions, as well as the need of institutions of higher education in arts and sports, one could take the number of 15 to 20 higher education schools as acceptable. Of all universities, 63% are concentrated in three big cities of Bulgaria (17 in Sofia, 5 in Plovdiv, 4 in Varna). Thus the higher education network not only consists of many institutions but they are also unevenly distributed. The average size of Bulgarian universities is 5600 students. If we subtract from the total number of students the number of students in the largest 5 Bulgarian universities (with over 10000 students each), the average size of the remaining universities is approximately 4100 students.

The organs of governing the higher education school are the General Assembly, the Academic Council and the Rector. The General Assembly of a University elects the Academic Council and the Rector. The structure of universities contains faculties and departments (chairs). The organs of government of a faculty are the faculty’s General Assembly, the Faculty Board and the Dean (the latter two are elected by the faculty’s General Assembly). The department or chair is governed by the Head of Department. The latter is elected by the Department Board and confirmed by the Faculty Board.

The academic career of university teachers is regulated by the Scientific Degrees and Titles Act. It sets the procedures and requirements to the candidates for obtaining the scientific degrees of ‘Doctor’ (PhD) and ‘Doctor of Sciences’ (Dr.) and the scientific titles of ‘Docent’ (Associate Professor) and ‘Professor’. The whole process is managed by a High Attestation Commission which has scientific committees and specialized scientific councils. Since the procedures of bestowing the titles of ‘Associate Professor’ and ‘Professor’ are centralized, candidates receive a scientific degree that is not linked to the respective school of higher education, i.e. these are titles of the High Attestation Commission of the Republic of Bulgaria. Receiving the scientific title of ‘Professor’ requires the possession of the scientific degree of ‘Doctor of Sciences’, which makes the procedure complicated and time-consuming. As a result of this, among other causes, the average age of professors in Bulgaria is over 60.

Depending on the range of provided education, the institutions of higher education are:

Universities – higher education schools with education in a wide range of specialities in at least three of the four basic areas of science
Specialized schools of higher education – ones with education in one of the basic areas of science, arts, physical culture, or military science
Independent colleges or ones in the structure of a higher education school – higher education schools with education in one of the basic areas of science. They can conduct education in any speciality, with the particularity that the amount of classes is diminished, but not under half the amount required to obtain the same speciality in a university or a specialized high education school. This specificity affects mostly the period and degree of education, which in colleges is the one of Professional Bachelor with an education period of three years and Bachelor with a period of four years of study.

Depending on the way of funding, the institutions of higher educations are:

State-owned – their main source of funding is a subsidy coming from the state budget
Private – not funded from the state budget

Depending on the financial relations between the student and the higher education school, the latter are divided into:

Higher education schools teaching under the conditions of a state order – this means that the academic tuition fee paid by students is relatively low, within the limits of 400 to 600 Bulgarian levs (for the whole academic year; roughly equal to 200 to 300 Euros), and this fee is deposited to the administration of the school in two equal installments – in the beginning of the academic year, when the student is enrolled for the first semester (usually in July for those who are going to be in their first year, and in the beginning in October for students of later years) and at the enrollment for the second semester (usually in the end of February after the end of the winter exam session). This fee is relatively acceptable because the basic financial maintenance of students is formed mostly from the subsidy which the higher education school receives from the state budget. Therefore, only state-owned institutions of higher education accept students under the conditions of state order.
Higher education schools teaching under the conditions of paid education – here the academic tuition fee paid by students is relatively high, within the range of 300 to 1000 Euros (for the whole academic year), and for some specialities it is above 1000 Euros. Such a fee is unfortunately unthinkable for a large part of the young people deciding to apply to universities. This is due to the fact that usually such a high fee is introduced by the private institutions of higher education which do not receive subsidies from the state budget. They treat education as a service subject to market mechanisms and they offer it as one. One must take into account that state-owned universities also have specialities which are under the conditions of paid education, or in many cases the speciality may be studied under each of the two forms (state order or self-paid), as the conditions of enrollment are respectively different (usually the entrance mark for the state order is higher than the one for paid education).

The Bulgarian law and in particular the Higher Education Act with its latest amendments as of 2007 construct the following model that introduces three educational-qualificational degrees into the system of higher education.

Bachelor – a course of four years of study which provides basic wide-profile preparation and degree of qualification and which gives direct access to the labour market. The educational-qualificational degree of Bachelor is the basis of the policy of the Ministry of Education and Science in the preparation of specialists with higher education. The education in this degree guarantees the mastery of a certain amount of wide-profile theoretical knowledge and practical skills for the mass needs of social practice, as well as adaptability and mobility with regard to changing conditions of their realization. The wide profile of preparation is the model that is developing against the background of the massification of higher education in its transition from the elite type to the mass type.
Master – at least one additional year of study after the Bachelor degree, which provides in-depth fundamental preparation combined with acquiring a profile in a specific or interdisciplinary speciality.
Doctor – another three years of study in a scientific speciality, which provides narrow specialization as the basis for scientific research and teaching.

Depending on the degree of engagement in the study process, both the state-owned and the private institutions of higher education offer three different forms of education in most specialities:

Ordinary – attending lectures and seminars in the daytime, according to a schedule set for each speciality by the Study Department of the higher education school. Attendance of classes is obligatory. The academic year is divided into two periods called ‘the winter semester’ (October to January) and ‘the summer semester’ (February to June). Each semester closes with an exam session. For some specialities, there are practicums or apprenticeships during the summer months.
Extramural – the curricula are the same as for ordinary education but extramural students do not attend the university on a daily basis; they only attend the ‘presence classes’ which take place during two to three weeks twice per year. For each exam for extramural students, several dates are set, in order to enable them to take the exams in a time that is suitable for them. The education of extramural students lasts one or two years longer than that of ordinary students.
Distance education – the link to the university is made mostly through the Internet and a specially created information base allowing a round-the-clock access to study materials in electronic form, materials for testing knowledge etc. There also is the possibility of contacts with teachers and fellow students through e-mail etc. The advantage of this form of education is that it allows for a very large freedom to the student, as well as lower expenses, which is especially important for those euphemistically designated as being ‘in an unequal social, position’.
Evening education – this form of education has the same cycle as the ordinary one but classes take place in the evenings. The idea is to enable those who work in the daytime to attend lectures and seminars in preserving the advantages of ordinary education.

Conditions and procedure of applying and admittance

The conditions and procedures of applying and admittance to the profiled high schools and to the institutions of higher education are basically the same:

· Taking a competition exam

· Forming a competitive grade

· Descending ranking in a preliminary defined number of enrollment places

· Enrollment

According to the Bulgarian Constitution, the high school level education in state-owneed and municipal schools is free of charge, and the higher education is either by state order (a minimum fee must be paid) or fully paid.