The
Liberal Sorin Cîmpeanu Thursday night stepped down as education minister, amid
plagiarism allegations. The announcement of his resignation however made no
reference to academic fraud accusations. It was an opportunity and an honour
for me to start a thorough reform of the national education system. I took over
the ministry not because I had too much free time or to add this position to my
resume. I came at a very difficult time, with the desire to change things for
the better, Cîmpeanu posted on his Facebook page.
The
outgoing education minister takes pride in drafting the education laws as part
of a presidential programme entitled ‘Educated Romania,’ and announces he will
continue to support them as a professor, university rector and a Senator.
Sorin
Cîmpeanu is accused of having plagiarised over 90 pages of a university course
textbook from the work of 2 professors with the University of Agricultural
Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Bucharest. The journalist Emilia Şercan, specialising
in the investigation of academic fraud, wrote that Sorin Cîmpeanu had
appropriated 13 chapters published previously under the signature of two other
professors. The then-minister dismissed the allegations, claiming that they had
been made by people who were trying by all means to hinder the education laws, and
whom he described as wholesome illiterates.
With
this resignation, Sorin Cîmpeanu also dodged the uncomfortable motion under
which the Opposition was asking him to step down. Romania educated to cheat. Sorin Cîmpeanu is a disgrace
to education is the tale-telling title of the motion text. The move has
now lost all practical significance, but the issue of plagiarism remains a
plague among politicians, and seems to grow acute. Cîmpeanu’s own party chief,
the PM Nicolae Ciucă, is himself suspected of plagiarism. And the lure of
academic fraud sweeps the entire political class, irrespective of parties. A
former prime minister, the Social Democrat Victor Ponta, was proved to be a
plagiarist.
The reform in which Cîmpeanu takes so much pride,
but which is criticised in many respects, includes a suspicious measure, to say
the least, namely the dismantling of the National Council Attesting Academic
Titles, Diplomas and Certificates. The measure is not constructive and
does not contribute to a true reform of the education sector, argue the leaders
of several universities. They
believe the allegations against Sorin Cîmpeanu must be analysed thoroughly, outside
any kind of pressure, by the relevant bodies of the university in question and
other public institutions.
The
theft will go on, until Romania has implemented in-depth reform, able to return
education to where it belongs, next to hard work and honesty, says the MEP Dacian
Cioloş, a former technocratic prime minister. He believes Cîmpeanu’s
resignation to be a failed act, in that it does not explain the resignation,
but rather claims only achievements and accomplishments. (AMP)
