RSS
Viorel Barbu,CNATDCU president, resigns
Viorel Barbu, the president of the National Council Attesting University Titles, Diplomas and Certificates (CNATDCU) resigned.
He explained that the main reason of his resignation was the fact that following amendments adopted by senators on Monday for the education law, CNATDCU will have a “decorative role”, without any prerogatives.
“The council has become a decorative body according to the new law. Practically, it no longer has any powers. Personally I am not willing to waste time,” Barbu explained.
Mircea Dumitru, the minister of education, declared on Tuesday, asked about the Senate decision to deny the request to re-examine the law approving government emergency order 4/2016, by which CNATDCU is taken out of the circuit analysing plagiarism, that the council has started working correctly and yield results, that the present university system needs such a centralised national mechanism to analyse plagiarism in doctoral dissertations.
“CNATDCU justifies its existence. This amendment of the law is not beneficial for academic life in Romania,” said the minister of education, adding that “certainly universities can do it, but we should openly present problems that come up.”
“CNATDCU has started working correctly and yields results,” the minister said, referring to the decisions of plagiarism in the Ponta and Oprea cases.
“We need a sort of centralised, national mechanism,” to solve the problem of plagiarism, the minister added.
“In countries where universities function according to a regime which strengthens academic autonomy and academic responsibility, universities must judge and decide in case of plagiarism. In our case we had instances when universities did not answer criticisms about plagiarism. That is why I think that in Romania, an institution like CNATDCU justifies its existence at present,” Mircea Dumitru said.