Students’ Perspective on Romanian Higher Education Quality: A Statistical Approach
Abstract A recent survey (made by Universitas 21), which took into account 50 countries worldwide, has ranked Romania 42nd in the world, in a ranking of the best university systems, managing to exceed only 3 countries from the European Union. By comparing with previous years, the rank has slightly lowered. The present study attempts to conduct an overview on the state of the higher education national system with the purpose of making improvements to it. Firstly, the paper consists of presenting the general data of the context in which the Romanian higher education is situated. The SWOT analysis conducted in various universities from Romania, are summarized, following with the broad shaping of the elements that define the quality of higher education. Secondly, the study aims to conduct a statistical survey among Romanian students for the assessment of general trends in their opinion upon the discussed topic.As the actual beneficiaries of the services offered by the Romanian universities, the students have a significant importance and thus, based on the answers, we prepare from their perspective a SWOT analysis of the Romanian higher education quality.The results establish in an easy and precise manner the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the educational system, after which measures can be taken in order to improve, or better said, to optimize the processes of universities in the country.
A REVIEW OF MODELS AND TECHNIQUES USED TO GAUGE QUALITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION
The purpose of this paper is to examine various models and techniques used in HEIs around the world with a specific focus on four elements which are: the dimensions or areas covered in the quality evaluation, the instruments used for data collection, the targeted stakeholders, and the statistical analyses used for the data gathered. A review of high indexed publications was done and the focus of the search was on the specific elements. It was found that on average, there are five dimensions used in these studies which are mainly related to academic aspects and administrative services. The Questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection in all these models. The majority of these studies targeted one stakeholder of HEIs which is the current students. Different level of statistical tests were used in the analysis of the selected papers. These findings will be an important contribution to the field of quality of higher education with its critical focus on the methodological implementation in the review of the literature.
Science Buddies: Advancing Informal Science Education
An innovative nonprofit enables scientists to present inspiring project ideas based on their own research to K–12 students, parents, and teachers. Every year, about 10 million North American kindergarten through high school (K–12) students complete a science project. What part of these science projects is the most difficult? Formulating a hypothesis? Designing an experiment? Analyzing data? The answer: None of the above. Science Buddies (www.sciencebuddies.org)—a nonprofit developer of software, content, and other resources for informal science and engineering education—found that students have the most difficulty selecting a topic and doing background research to inform their work. Meanwhile, scientists and engineers interested in advising and inspiring students often do not have a means to connect with them (see the first figure). To Science Buddies, these difficulties presented an ideal challenge, and we applied a business methodology to address them, viewing our users as customers and our output as products.