Adequately Responding to “Reform” and “Anti‐Reform” Pressures in the Romanian Higher Education System under the Bologna Process

Under the policy umbrella of the Bologna Process, European Universities are being steered towards uniformity in terms of their institutional missions and academic curricula. Romania, as a new member of the European Community, feels such supra‐national policy pressures for “reform” in its higher education sector most keenly. As a result, it is only natural that what can be broadly defined as nationalistic “anti‐reform” pressures also arise. The article describes how one specific University leader at a resolutely European‐oriented Romanian University seeks to productively mediate between these competing policy imperatives, with the hope that the historical foundations unique to Romanian Universities can be well incorporated into larger European visions of higher education operating within a pluralistic (not monolithic) global framework.