The Coalition for Clean Universities (CCU) project continued throughout 2009-2010, with an assessment of the use of public money in Romanian academic research and higher education.
The more active part of the project was the launch of an Education Ombudsman. This is a service to be offered by the Coalition to public research grant applicants whose efforts were not successful, but otherwise deserved to be; to teaching assistants who could not be promoted due to unjustified reasons; and to students whose rights have been infringed. The adviser will help the applicants better understand how the process works, what the available instruments are, in order for them to submit appeals or complaints, and how to use the existing administrative and judicial procedures. The Coalition will act as an Ombudsman, opening discussions with public authorities on those specific cases, engaging them in solving the cases and thus create precedents and/or engaging them in the improvement of procedures/policies. The project aims to strengthen the administrative channels for feedback and to provide control over the fair awarding of public grants.
The Coalition for Clean Universities also conducted its second yearly evaluation of state universities. The evaluation mostly focused on the follow-up to the evaluators’ recommendations in 2008-2009 to each and every university.
The results of the project were made available to the public in March- April 2010.
This project was supported through a grant from the Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe Trust.
May 2009