Introduction

Year 2000 marked important changes that affected higher education in Romania after the country embraced the Bologna process. These changes questioned the universities’ focus on teaching, modified the curricula and the structure of undergraduate and graduate programs, and allowed for increased autonomy and academic freedom from the Ministry of Education. This chapter first reviews the historical and institutional context in which political science reappeared in 1989 after decades of communist restrictions, and then details the structure, enrolment and recruitment patterns of the 13 public universities with political science departments. It argues that political science has become a respected academic field and a university programme popular among the country's best high school graduates. Unprecedented requirements introduced in 2005, which asked faculty members to test the value of their research by seeking publication in top peer-reviewed scholarly journals with international reputation in their fields, seek to connect Romanian political scientists with their peers abroad but are yet to make a real impact. Political science departments, as other fields of Romanian higher education, still struggle with inadequate funding, academic dishonesty, and parochialism of aging academics.