Ministerul Educației și Cercetării a făcut anunțul! Concursurile pentru funcțiile de conducere în universitățile „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” și cea Tehnică din Iași au fost suspendate

O decizie a Ministerului Educației și Cercetării – MEC a blocat toate concursurile pentru funcțiile de conducere în universitățile „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” – UAIC și cea Tehnică – TUIAȘI „Gheorghe Asachi” din Iași. Este vorba inclusiv de cele pentru poziția de decan, directori de departamente sau echipe din cadrul proiectelor de cercetare. În acest context, instituțiile de învățământ anunță că reluarea procedurilor de concurs va fi anunțată în timp util cu respectarea procedurilor legale. Având în vedere toate acestea, persoanele care ocupă aceste posturi (pentru mandatul 2016-2020) vor rămâne ca interimari până la momentul în care starea de fapt se va debloca. „Decretul Prezidențial nr. 195 din 16 martie 2020 privind instituirea Stării de Urgență pe teritoriul României, cu Hotărârea Biroului Executiv al Consiliului de Administrație (BECA) al Universității «Cuza» din Iași, informează că toate concursurile pentru ocuparea posturilor didactice auxiliare și nedidactice se suspendă până la ridicarea termenelor privind instituirea Stării de Alertă. Reluarea procedurilor de concurs va fi anunțată în timp util cu respectarea procedurilor legale”, au precizat cei de la „Cuza”.

Ministerul Educației și Cercetării (MEC) a decis, în această perioadă grea pe fondul pandemiei de COVID-19, ca toate concursurile pentru funcțiile de conducere în universitățile „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” (UAIC) și cea Tehnică (TUIAȘI) „Gheorghe Asachi” din Iași să fie suspendate. Ministerul Educației și Cercetării a stabilit ca, pentru funcțiile de conducere în universitățile „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” și cea Tehnică din Iași, concursurile să fie suspendate.

Este vorba inclusiv de cele pentru poziția de decan, directori de departamente sau echipe din cadrul proiectelor de cercetare. În acest context, instituțiile de învățământ anunță că reluarea procedurilor de concurs va fi anunțată în timp util cu respectarea procedurilor legale. De reamintit că, la universitățile de: Medicină și Farmacie (UMF) „Grigore T. Popa”, de Științe Agricole și Medicină Veterinară (USAMV) „Ion Ionescu de la Brad”, respectiv Națională de Arte „George Enescu” (UNAGE), concursurile pentru aceste funcții de conducere au avut loc. Astfel, măsura se va aplica doar la nivel de posturi didactice sau alte concursuri care ar urma să aibă loc.

Rectorii au anunțat oficial comunitatea de această situație excepțională a suspendării concursurilor la decani și alte funcții

În acest context, prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Cașcaval, rectorul de la Politehnica ieșeană, face precizări pe acest plan.

„Înainte de luarea acestei decizii, noi oricum eram pregătiți, asta la nivel de decanate ale celor 11 facultăți ale noastre, să derulăm procedura inclusiv on-line. Cu această măsură anunță că au fost suspendate toate concursurile din Universitatea noastră, inclusiv pe zona conducerilor echipelor pentru proiecte de cercetare și orice altă funcție, asta până ce se va lua o decizie de anulare”, a precizat prof. univ. dr. ing. Dan Cașcaval, rectorul Universității Tehnice.

Având în vedere toate acestea, persoanele care ocupă aceste posturi (pentru mandatul 2016-2020) vor rămâne ca interimari până la momentul în care starea de fapt se va debloca.

„Decretul Prezidențial nr. 195 din 16 martie 2020 privind instituirea Stării de Urgență pe teritoriul României, cu Hotârârea Biroului Executiv al Consiliului de Administrație (BECA) al Universității „Cuza” din Iași, informează că toate concursurile pentru ocuparea posturilor didactice auxiliare și nedidactice se suspendă până la ridicarea termenelor privind instituirea Stării de Alertă. Reluarea procedurilor de concurs va fi anunțată în timp util cu respectarea procedurilor legale”, au precizat cei de la „Cuza„.

Publicație : Bună Ziua Iași

Clădirea „Energeticii“ de la TUIASI, refăcută cu banii UE. Universitatea a atras cele mai multe proiecte ARDNE

Odată cu asta, TUIAŞI devine instituţia de învăţământ superior din Moldova cu cele mai multe proiecte europene aprobate de ARDNE 

Universitatea Tehnică „Gh. Asachi“ (TUIASI) a semnat un contract de finanţare europeană în valoare de aproximativ 8,8 milioane de lei, acesta fiind cel de-al treilea semnat cu Agenţia de Dezvoltare Regională Nord-Est. Cel de-al treilea contract presupune modernizarea completă a corpului „Energetică“ al Facultăţii de Inginerie Electrică, Energetică şi Informatică Aplicată (FIEEIA). În urma semnării acestui contract, TUIASI devine instituţia de învăţământ superior din regiunea Moldovei cu cele mai multe proiecte aprobate de ADRNE.

Clădirea care va fi modernizată a fost finalizată în urmă cu cu 50 de ani. Complexul, care are ieşire la bulevardul Dimitrie Mangeron, a fost ridicat în trei ani, între 1977 şi 1980, iar în tot acest timp nu a suferit vreo intervenţie majoră de reabilitare, în special la nivel structu – ral. Conform angajamentelor contractuale cu ADRNE, lucrările trebuie să fie finalizate în 18 luni, până în 31.10.2021. „Elaborarea proiectelor de reabilitare a reprezentat o activitate deosebită din partea echipei coordonate de domnul prorector Marcel Istrate, activitate care a însemnat nu doar competenţă, ci şi mult efort, inspiraţie şi răbdare în redactarea solicitărilor de clarificări, multe dintre acestea imperative şi restrictive ca timp de răspuns. Acum, prin cele trei proiecte de finanţare semnate, se confirmă reuşita deplină a colegilor noştri implicaţi şi se poate începe implementarea efectivă a acestora, proces care, odată finalizat, va contribui substanţial atât la crearea unor spaţii moderne destinate studenţilor, cât şi la schimbarea înfăţişării platformei didactice“, a declarat prof.dr.ing. Dan Caşcaval, rectorul universităţii.

Politehnica ieşeană a depus trei proiecte de finanţare către ADRNE, toate primind finanţare. Ultimul presupune atât refacerea elementelor de structură şi de rezistenţă sau a instalaţiilor electrice, cât şi o regândire din punct de vedere arhitectural.

Publicație : Ziarul de Iași

 The Guardian view on the stunting effect: hard to blossom in the Covid-19 era

The class of 2020 is coming of age in the most testing and difficult circumstances. The rest of society should find ways to provide assistance

In Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the transition from school in provincial Sligo to student life in Dublin affects the two main characters very differently. Marianne, a distrusted loner back home, enjoys a fulfilling social life for the first time. Connell, the local Gaelic football star from a working-class background, fails to assimilate in the elite environs of Trinity College Dublin, but discovers his academic vocation.

Ms Rooney’s novel, recently televised to widespread acclaim, is a classic Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. It follows the two protagonists during crucial formative years, as they acquire an education in the widest sense. Sadly, for many school-leavers in the summer of coronavirus, this journey to a transformative future has become a literally remote prospect.

This week, the University of Cambridge announced that all student lectures for the next academic year will be taught online. Other colleges and universities are likely to follow suit, in the hope of offering clarity to students and time for lecturers to properly adapt and prepare. Survey results suggest that one in five prospective undergraduates would rather defer than begin their degree course in such strange circumstances. An argument about the level of tuition fees for those who do sign up is inevitable.

For school-leavers not intending to do a degree, the situation is equally disorienting and disheartening. Businesses are radically reducing the number of apprenticeships on offer, battening down the hatches in the hope of keeping existing employees on board. Internships, placements and work experience programmes are also being substantially cut back. More broadly, the catastrophe that has befallen the leisure, retail and hospitality industry will hit under-25s hardest of all. The gloomy landscape has prompted the Resolution Foundation thinktank to call for some kind of job guarantee for the young.

It is right to focus on the economic predicament of the class of 2020. But we should also be attentive to the enormous emotional strain that must come with being 18 this summer. Having left school overnight in March without properly saying goodbye, this cohort has been deprived of all the usual rites of passage and moments of catharsis: there have been no exams, no proms, no pubs and no parties. For those beginning higher education this autumn, remote learning will never offer the same opportunity to grow as a crowded university campus. Others hoping to go straight from school to the workplace will find it transformed and far less accessible. Taking a gap year will be tempting for some, but the prospects for travel are likely to be constrained, even if the money can be found.

The intensity peculiar to our late teenage years, lived on the threshold of adulthood and independence, is never repeated. The government should think urgently and creatively about how to offer fulfilling opportunities and new social possibilities for a generation that is coming of age in the most testing of circumstances.

Publicație : The Guardian

If we can do without GCSEs and university exams now, why go back?

Abandon this addiction to assessment. For one year at least, let the class of 2020 be assumed to have passed with honour

The exam season is upon us, or rather is not upon us. Its pens and papers, its clocks, marks, adjustments and grades are as dust. There are some blessings to Covid-19, and one may yet be to liberate education from the dictatorship of “the test”.

The government has already abandoned this year’s GCSEs and A-levels, replacing them with a bureaucratic miasma of calculated and standardised grades in a frantic attempt to keep its beloved metrics alive. For a year, Britain’s children are excused the medieval ritual of sitting in a great hall like acolytes at an altar, trying to remember answers to questions they have just “revised” and will soon forget again. Exam environments are an unreal world, before QWERTY, computers, mobiles and the internet were invented, yet one on which they were told their future depended. It is still guarded by that most conservative of professions, teaching the young.

A devastating assault on this parody of modern education comes from the information technology radical, Conrad Wolfram. Called The Math(s) Fix, it portrays maths as a subject which, perhaps like others, is trapped in the pre-computer age. This is largely because scribbling numbers on paper is the easiest way the authorities can measure, compare and regulate children, pandering to “an unhealthy fixation for assessment, an addictive fix for policy-makers to push”. Maths is the apotheosis of the exam, with its pretence of exactitude. To me, Wolfram portrays maths exams as like taking a driving test with a horse and cart. It needs to take over where the computer leaves off, in a world of calculated uncertainty, risk and, dare we say it, common sense.

If overnight we can do without GCSE exams – surely never to return – what about A-levels? They have become the national entry ticket to a job or university, freeing employers and admissions officers from having to assess and treat young people as individuals. There are signs that policymakers are waking up to this. The Whitehall 2020 guidance on awarding qualifications calls on universities to “take a holistic approach” on how to admit students, whatever that means.

At least the A-level exam is a rite of passage, but why universities need to hold exams escapes me. Their students are paying them for a service. If they do not like it, or it does not like them, they can leave. Education lies in the totality of the course, not something that can be written down on paper. Exams are a make-work scheme for dons merely to see “who is top”.

Here, push has really come to shove. Oxford has abolished its first-year exams for this year, baldly stating: “Students will be assumed to have passed.” Some universities are refashioning their climactic exam as an “open-book” test, an online, home-bound experience with a clock ticking. Students may dispense with pen and paper, but stern “honour” warnings are issued against plagiarism – or as the satirist Tom Lehrer said, “call it research”. This must be a huge advantage to those with quiet, well-equipped studies and nifty copy-and-paste skills.

To the obvious solution – Oxford assuming everyone who finishes a course has “passed” – the protest is, what about class of degree as ticket to ride? This bluff, too, has been called. In 2017 the accountancy giant, Grant Thornton, made a dramatic discovery. It had been screening its annual 10,000 applicants for graduates with firsts and 2:1s. For some reason – perhaps a CEO with a 2:2 – it dropped this barrier in favour of intensive interviews. It subsequently found more recruits with “poorer” degrees became high fliers than those with higher ones. Degree class was actually a negative indicator of future achievement. A subsequent Bridge Group survey found class of degree was not even cited for City jobs, as against “behaviour at interview”. There are no degrees in that.

Universities now face a horrendous challenge. They are about to lose tens of thousands of lucrative overseas students. Their finances are in ruin. According to the Office for National Statistics, a third of all graduates are doing jobs for which no degree is needed, and that is likely to worsen. Meanwhile Google, Wikipedia and online data have transformed the world of information, learning and research. Yet universities are stuck with three and four-year courses, long holidays and a fixation with exams.

So why not an experiment? Edinburgh, Manchester, Cambridge and others have already put their lectures online, Cambridge for an entire year. It is hard to see why they should ever revert. Who needs a lecture hall when you can sit in Starbucks with a book and a laptop? A live university is about two-way interaction. When it comes to exams, for one year at least, let “the class of 2020” be assumed to have passed “with honour”. Then, say five years on, let us investigate if freedom from exams had really harmed them, or rather allowed them that essence of learning, more contact between teacher and taught. Something tells me these would be the gilded ones of their generation.

Publicație : The Guardian

Universities are on the brink of crisis. Coronavirus may tip them over the edge

After years of frozen tuition fees, and with costs rising fast, the pandemic could be the end for some institutions

The UK’s universities are now in real crisis. They are not crying wolf, and they are not asking for more money to inflate management salaries or buff up shiny new buildings. If they don’t get more help, some of them could well fold in the near future.

This emergency has been in the making for a long time. Tuition fees have been fixed at the background level of general inflation, way below cost rises inside higher education itself, for nearly a decade; they have been completely frozen for two years. A whole generation of new buildings has been needed to replace worn-out estate from the 1950s and 1960s. Pension costs are rising.

Coronavirus is a perfect storm on an already forbidding sea. By obliterating income from international fees and taught postgraduate courses, as well as potentially slashing home undergraduate numbers for at least a year, institutions that were getting into trouble are now lurching towards disaster.

What might that mean in the medium- to long-term? With this level of uncertainty, prediction is very difficult indeed, but there probably are three or four lines of march.

First and foremost, universities will now be subject to the same, or an even fiercer level of, the austerity that the rest of the public sector has been feeling for a decade. The relatively good years that made things feel merely cramped and gritty, while large sectors of our shared lives fell into decrepitude, are sadly over.

The exact level of that pain is still subject to uncertainty. Boris Johnson, who, like David Cameron, always dreamed of being a sunny, expansive prime minister in a time of plenty, might try to spend his way out of any difficulties – especially on the capital side, where he retains a penchant for costly big-ticket projects.

In addition, Johnson won’t necessarily want his “levelling up” agenda threatened. Conservatives will worry if Keele University gets into trouble in a freshly blue seat, and right next to new Tory seats in Stoke-on-Trent; or if the University of Bolton collapses, sitting as it does right next to five more Tory gains from 2019.

The Treasury is, however, another matter. By quibbling over help for small businesses and, more ominously, pushing back against a proper rescue package for universities themselves, it has clearly indicated it is going to want back a lot of the money from its limited assistance.

Yes, tuition fees have been brought forward. Yes, olive branches may be extended to individual institutions. But the Treasury will say that the money is going to have to come from somewhere. If it doesn’t come from students – and higher fees seem politically impossible – it will come from redundancies. It is as simple as that.

A second trend will be mergers and “rationalisation”. Those universities who do get into really acute financial trouble are unlikely to just shut their doors and put up a “closed” sign. They are going to put out an urgent request for help – which is one of the reasons why the government, very unwisely, might let them suffer for now.

In that case, regional blocs could be shoved together like Lego, making use of expensive buildings and infrastructure while slimming down the student offer – and potentially making staff redundant and taking on more part-time teachers.

A sprinkling of mergers will look like it is saving the government money, since the cost in chaos and incoherence will only emerge some way down the track, and this course will not only lure Whitehall. Scottish universities, relatively numerous and without recourse to undergraduate fees for Scottish residents, look particularly likely to fall victim to these shotgun marriages.

Thirdly, another opportunity the government will seek to wrest from this crisis will be a different sort of merger. Some of what many observers patronisingly and offensively think of as the “weakest” universities may get shoved out of traditional higher education altogether, asked, as they struggle, to get together with groups of regional further education providers (which often offer technical or vocational training).

This is where shorter degree-level courses over two rather than three years, teaching over the traditional summer break and research-light teaching might come in, opening the way for future governments to cope with the demographic bulge of 18-year-olds that is about to start. This will be at a much lower cost than allowing them all to claim £9,250 a year for three years.

Fourthly, it may be that online and distance learning gets a decisive boost from the cessation of face-to-face teaching, especially if no effective coronavirus treatments or vaccine emerge in pretty short order. Cambridge has already announced that all its lectures will go online during 2020/21, though it’s still planning to conduct seminars and tutorials in person – at a safe distance.

It is hard to imagine the full roster of on-campus activities resuming without that sort of progress, and if this physically distanced phase continues for a year or even more some undergraduates may get a taste for it. Living in halls has become enormously expensive: polls show that students are much more worried about their living costs than fees. So-called “blended” learning, in which universities provide more recorded content alongside face-to-face contact, may become more prevalent.

It is more than possible to be sceptical about this last point. The overwhelmingly young people who take first degrees in the UK have never shown much appetite for learning from the parental home. But any new coalitions bringing together the less well-established end of higher education with further education might find this an attractive way to further lower costs.

The UK’s universities are now entering a white-water phase of change. No more money will be forthcoming – at least, for the sector as a whole. Some universities will be forced to appeal for individual bailouts.

In return, both Whitehall and the devolved administrations will want something back: a cheaper, thinner, less numerous, less homogenous and more “efficient” sector in which managerialism and audit will balloon further. It is not much of an appealing prospect.

Publicație : The Guardian

Culture, tourisme, hôtellerie : changement de plans pour les futurs diplômés

Alors que les étudiants de ces secteurs redoutent de grosses difficultés pour trouver un premier emploi, certains adoptent de nouvelles stratégies.

Juste avant le confinement, Tobias, étudiant en master hôtellerie de luxe à l’université de Marne-la-Vallée (Seine-et-Marne), était en stage depuis deux mois dans un palace parisien. Sanglé dans un uniforme de gouvernant, il apprenait, pour clore ses études, à encadrer une équipe. Il aurait pu être embauché par la suite. Mais avec le confinement, le palace a fermé ses portes. « Je vais devoir chercher un travail dans un secteur en crise avec seulement deux mois d’expérience », se désole-t-il. Il a aussi perdu son job au parc d’attractions de Disney, qui lui permettait d’arrondir ses fins de mois. Désormais, pour ce jeune Allemand qui a suivi toute sa scolarité en France, les plans sont totalement chamboulés. Si le palace ne rouvre pas cet été, Tobias envisage de suivre une année d’études supplémentaire, pour s’insérer l’année prochaine sur le marché du travail dans de meilleures conditions. Pourquoi pas « un MBA dans une école de gouvernants ».

Alors que l’hôtellerie-restauration, le tourisme et la culture sont particulièrement affectés par la crise liée au coronavirus, les futurs diplômés de ces secteurs anticipent de graves difficultés pour trouver un emploi. Hervé Becam, vice-président de l’Union des métiers et des industries de l’hôtellerie (UMIH), présage une année noire, avec « 20 % à 25 % des entreprises qui ne rouvriront pas » si les aides ne sont pas maintenues. « La priorité à court terme des entreprises est de se relever et de refaire travailler leurs équipes », estime George Rudas, président de l’Institut français du tourisme. Les embauches passent au second plan. « Les perspectives sur le marché du travail sont sombres, au moins équivalentes aux crises de 1993 et 2008. Les derniers arrivés, de n’importe quel secteur, sont les premiers touchés par la crise. Les jeunes se retrouvent dans une file d’attente, et vont être touchés de plein fouet par cette récession », explique Philippe Askenazy, économiste du travail et directeur de recherches au CNRS.

Stages amputés

Conscients de ces difficultés, les étudiants en fin de cycle tentent de s’adapter, pour éviter le chômage à la rentrée. Inès (son prénom a été changé) est en master tourisme monde chinois et digital marketing à Angers, et continue son stage dans une agence de voyage en télétravail. Bilingue en mandarin et passionnée par l’Asie, elle sait qu’elle devra revoir ses ambitions à la baisse : le tourisme international se trouve au point mort. Pour les prochains mois, cette Angevine, qui a l’habitude de se « débrouiller seule », compte « trouver un job alimentaire, et miser sur le marketing digital, plus porteur ». Florent, qui devait commencer un CDD dans une galerie d’art à Marseille, travaille maintenant dans les champs de son père, agriculteur. Optimiste, il pense qu’il sera rappelé plus tard mais qu’en attendant il « acceptera n’importe quel job, sans faire la fine bouche ».

Publicație : Le Monde

Coronavirus : imbroglio autour de la télésurveillance des examens à l’université Rennes-I

En donnant la possibilité de recourir à une surveillance en ligne des épreuves en raison de la crise sanitaire, l’établissement a suscité une levée de boucliers parmi les étudiants.

Contraintes d’organiser les examens à distance, les universités mettent en place dans l’urgence des modalités nouvelles de contrôle. Et la télésurveillance des examens en est une. Mais elle n’est pas sans risque. C’est la leçon que tire l’université Rennes-I, après avoir permis à ses formations de recourir aux services d’une entreprise privée spécialisée dans la surveillance en ligne.

Officiellement autorisée par le ministère de l’enseignement supérieur, la télésurveillance des épreuves présente a priori un avantage : garantir la valeur du diplôme, principe sur lequel Frédérique Vidal, la ministre l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, s’est dite intransigeante, quel que soit le contexte dans lequel les étudiants auront composé.

« Initialement, nous n’avions pas envisagé du tout la télésurveillance, mais la demande de certains étudiants était d’avoir des garanties sur les épreuves », explique Erwan Hallot, vice-président de l’université chargé de la formation. Les raisons de cette requête ? Une grande disparité dans les conditions de travail entre les étudiants, pouvant laisser craindre une injustice entre ceux qui auraient le loisir de consulter leurs parents diplômés ou leurs colocataires plus avancés dans leurs études et ceux qui, isolés ou consciencieux, respecteraient le règlement. « Nous avons donc laissé la possibilité de la télésurveillance, mais à titre exceptionnel, car nous savions qu’une partie des étudiants n’y étaient pas favorables », poursuit Erwan Hallot.

Un courriel informe les 30 000 étudiants que les modalités de passation de leurs partiels leur seront communiquées à la date du 15 mai. Chaque formation peut librement choisir. « La polémique a enflé immédiatement, relate Anne-Carole Poirier, élue étudiante, en troisième année de droit, et l’angoisse s’est emparée des étudiants. »

« Une intrusion dans la vie privée »

En quelques jours, une pétition lancée par la Fédération des syndicats étudiants de Rennes recueille un millier de signatures. Elle affirme qu’il est « irréaliste de devoir être sur le qui-vive pendant tout un examen en cas de contrôle surprise et de devoir s’interrompre, le cas échéant, pour montrer son lieu d’étude et sa carte d’étudiant ». Qu’elle soit « permanente ou momentanée, la télésurveillance constitue une intrusion dans notre vie privée », conclut le texte.

« Logiciel espion », vérification d’identité, hébergement des données personnelles sur les serveurs d’Amazon… Sur les réseaux sociaux, l’inquiétude s’affiche et instille l’idée d’une télésurveillance massive lors des partiels à Rennes-I. D’autant que les étudiants sont invités à remplir un formulaire pour donner leur accord sur le déroulé des épreuves – un document qui « n’a aucun lien avec la télésurveillance » et détaille des « règles élémentaires d’éthique qui s’appliquent, que les épreuves aient lieu en présentiel ou à distance », se défend Erwan Hallot.

Publicație : Le Monde