Babeș-Bolyai University


The Babeș-Bolyai University, commonly known by its abbreviation, UBB, is a public university in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. UBB has the longest academic tradition among the Romanian universities, is the largest Romanian university, and occupies the first position among the Romanian universities in the University Metaranking initiated by the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research in 2016.The Babeș-Bolyai University offers study programmes in Romanian, Hungarian, German, English, and French. The university was named after two prominent scientists from Transylvania, the Romanian bacteriologist Victor Babeș and the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai. It is one of the five members of the Universitaria Consortium.
UBB is affiliated, inter alia, to the International Association of Universities, the Santander Group, the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie and the European University Association. Likewise, UBB signed the Magna Charta Universitatum and concluded partnerships with 210 universities in 50 countries, and it is widely considered as one of the most prestigious in Eastern Europe. The Babeș-Bolyai University is classified as an advanced research and education university by the Ministry of Education.

History

The history of the education in Kolozsvár, begins in 1581, with the establishment of the Jesuit college by Stephen Báthory. The college received buildings and land within the medieval city walls, specifically on Platea Luporum. The first rector of the Collegium Academicum Claudiopolitanum was the Polish Jesuit priest Jakub Wujek. The institution had the rights to confer the university/academic titles of baccalaureus, magister, and doctor. In 1585, there were 230 students studying here, divided into six classes. The language of instruction and learning was Latin. After 1698, the institution was named Universitas Claudiopolitana, with teachings in Latin and later also in German. In 1753, Empress Maria Theresa changed the status of the university into an imperial one, and in 1773, after the dissolution of the Jesuit Order, the university went under the administration of the Piarist order. In 1786 Universitas Claudiopolitana became the Royal Academic Lyceum, which was later followed by two institutions with a semiuniversity statute : the Surgical-Medical Institute and the Academy of Law. This institutions will be later incorporated in the Franz Joseph University.
With the affirmation of the Romanian nation, in the context of the European revolutions of 1848, was explicitly questioned the issue on university in national language. At the express request of the Romanians, in 1870, József Eötvös, then Minister of Education, proposes the creation in Kolozsvár of a university teaching in Hungarian, Romanian and German, idea also welcomed by the Romanian elite. Meanwhile, Eötvös dies, and in 1872, Franz Joseph I legislates the establishment of the Hungarian Royal University of Kolozsvár in Hungarian only, which caused dissatisfaction among Romanians. After the oath, on 20 December 1872, 258 students start courses. There were created four distinct faculties: Faculty of Law and State Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and History, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. The faculties were equal to each other and enjoyed internal autonomy. The first rector was Professor Áron Berde from the Faculty of Law, specialist in economics and finance. Besides the four faculties is created a Pedagogical Institute, for training secondary school teachers. From 1895 the girls had the right to learn at university.
After the First World War, and in the context of the Great Union of 1918, the university was taken over by the Romanian authorities and became an institution of Greater Romania. Hungarian staff who have not sworn allegiance to the new Romanian state were expelled and they moved to the Hungarian University of Szeged.
On 12 May 1919 was constituted the Romanian University of Cluj. The new Romanian university, initially named Superior Dacia University, later King Ferdinand I University, was opened on 3 November 1919, and officially inaugurated on 1–2 February 1920 in the presence of King Ferdinand I.
In 1940, after territorial revision imposed by the Second Vienna Award, the university was moved to Timișoara and Sibiu, and the former Hungarian university was recreated in the city, returning from the Hungarian University of Szeged. After the end of the Second World War and the repeal of the Vienna Award, on 1 June 1945, Romanian authorities moved back in Cluj the Romanian King Ferdinand I University, and established Bolyai University, a state university teaching in Hungarian, with four faculties.
In the spring of 1959, the two educational institutions were united under the name Babeș-Bolyai University, after two renowned scholars: Romanian biologist Victor Babeș and Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai. In 1995, the Babeș-Bolyai University reorganises its structure, introducing a multicultural based education.
UBB is today a complex university, having programs from art/humanities, social sciences, life and natural sciences, mathematics/computer sciences to engineering and technology.

Campuses and buildings

The main campus is located in the city of Cluj-Napoca, with the university buildings spread across the city. The university has 17 student housing areas, totaling 5,280 places to stay ; most notable are Hașdeu and Economica. All dormitories are renovated, thermally insulated, have double-glazed windows, laminate flooring and chipboard or wood furniture. The Lucian Blaga University Library is located in the city centre. The university also has several colleges located in other cities spread across Transylvania and Maramureș.
Within the university's cultural heritage are the University Museum, the Mineralogical Museum, the Botanical Museum, the Paleontology-Stratigraphy Museum, the Vivarium and the Zoological Museum.

Academics

Babeș-Bolyai University has almost 45.000 students in 2019. Between 1993 and 2019, the number of students has quadrupled, from 12,247 in 1993 to 44,940 in 2019. The structure of the student body is composed out of over 1,200 PhD students, 8,600 master's degree students, and 31,800 undergraduates. The university has 21 faculties and over 2,800 faculty members. It offers bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees, along with advanced postgraduate studies. UBB is the only university in Europe that has four faculties of theology.
The university is in an multicultural institution which is very well illustrated by its structure: there are 291 study programmes in Romanian ; 110 study programmes in Hungarian ; and 15 study programmes in German. The Hungarian and German minorities are proportionately represented in the Professors' Council and the University Senate.
41.5% of foreign students come from Moldova and Ukraine, 27.4% from EU and EEA, and 31.1% from non-EU and non-EEA states.

Faculties

Ranking

UBB typically occupies the first position among the Romanian universities in the major international ranking of universities. In 2016, the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research commissioned the University Metaranking, combining the major international rankings of universities, as recognized by IREG). Since 2016, UBB occupies the first position among Romanian universities. In 2019, based on British QS STAR academic audit, UBB was evaluated as an international university with excellence in teaching and research.

Hungarian section

In 1995, the Babeș-Bolyai University introduced an educational system backed by the High Commissioner on National Minorities and based on multiculturalism and multilingualism, with three lines of study at all levels of academic degrees.
The Hungarian section enrolls 4,874 students in 115 study programmes ; the university is thus the principal institution that educates members of the Hungarian minority in Transylvania.

Hungarian-Romanian dispute

The Hungarian section of the university has a partial autonomy, gradually increasing in the recent years. However, in the opinion of the Council of the Hungarian section, those members appointed by the Hungarian-speaking teaching staff desire a more institutionalized form of autonomy. Since university decision-making is based on majority vote of the entire faculty, the Hungarian representatives in minority can always be silenced by this procedure.
In November 2006, Hantz Péter and Kovács Lehel, lecturers at the Babeș-Bolyai University, were discharged by the university after a series of actions started in October 2005 taken for language equality. They were campaigning for the re-organization of the Bolyai University by splitting it in two independent institutions. On 22 November 2006, the University organized an exhibition in the European Parliament, where they tried to give the impression that there are multilingual signs at the university. That day, Hantz added signs like "Information" and "No smoking" in Hungarian alongside those ones in Romanian. The two acted upon a decree permitting the use of multilingual signs, which had been decreed by the university but never put in practice, and official claims that the university is a multicultural institution with three working languages. On 27 November 2006, the Senate voted for exclusion of the two lecturers, with 72 for and 9 against votes. The Hungarian academic community is convinced that the exclusion was not a disciplinary action, but the vote was not ethnic based. In spite of protests, the resignation out of solidarity by several Hungarian-speaking university staff, and a call by 24 Hungarian MEPs for the reinstatement of the lecturers, they remained unemployed. The parties in the Hungarian Parliament asked the university to reinstate the two professors and respect the rights of the Hungarian minority. The presidents of the five parties represented in the Hungarian Parliament signed a statement of protest. Istvan Hiller, the Education Minister of Hungary, wrote to his Romanian counterpart Mihail Hărdău, asking for his help on the issue. The case has also been put forward in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Göran Lindblad, from the Swedish European People's Party, along with 24 signatories from 19 European countries, presented a motion for a resolution on the alleged breaching of the 1994 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities by the Romanian Government.
The two lecturers sued Romania at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Hantz and Kovacs turned to former Hungarian Justice Minister Albert Takács to represent them at the ECHR, eventually accepting the proposal. In 2008, the European Court of Human Rights established that the decision of UBB Senate to exclude Hantz Péter and Kovács Lehel from the teaching staff of the educational institution was legal.
In 2010, the education law has sparked numerous controversies by promoting ethnic segregation in higher education, according to teachers representatives. Anton Hadăr, President of Alma Mater Federation of Trade Unions in University Education considers that the separation of UBB on ethnic criteria would be not only risky but also unproductive. Among main disadvantages would be the increasingly serious gaps of ethnic Hungarians regarding the knowledge of Romanian language. Romanian MEP Corina Crețu warned that adopting the education law, with the claims of UDMR, would have harmful effects especially in Cluj. "Applying the law could lead to breaking UBB", stated Crețu.

Faculty, alumni and rectors

Professors and alumni:
Rectors: