site.btaSofia University Extends Admission Campaign to Fill 850 Places

August 24 (BTA) - The Sofia University announced thatit is extending its admission campaign to fill 850
subsidized places in full-time and extramural courses during the
 upcoming school year.

A total of 4,486 students have enrolled during the three legs of
 the admission campaign so far.

Fully-filled courses include preschool and primary school
pedagogy, speech therapy, Western and Eastern studies, EU
Studies, international relations, journalism, public relations,
book publishing, communications management, psychology, law
(full-time course), management, regional development and policy,
 economy and finances, tourism, optometry (full-time course),
chemistry (full-time course), informatics, computer studies, IT
systems, medicine, pharmacy, and graphic design.

Courses with the most unfilled places include history, Slavic
philology, history/foreign languages, Bulgarian philology,
social studies, history/philosophy, library and information
studies; history/geography, French, Portuguese and Russian
studies, some Eastern languages, agrobiotechnology, geography,
geology, theology, European religion studies, music, nursing and
 primary science teaching.

In a national radio interview Ivailo Dichev, professor in
cultural studies, said that higher education in Bulgaria is
dying and that concerted efforts are needed to save it.

He outlined several serious problems: uncompetitive programmes,
racism and the fact that degree courses are held only in
Bulgarian.

Dichev said that the fundamental problem of Bulgarian education
in general is that to a large extent courses are conceived to
help educators make a living.

"Any painful reforms in Bulgarian education right now would
involve a lot of people changing their specialties or simply
being made redundant in order to make room for other who will
teach things about the modern world and the modern way of life.
There is no power that can do this because it involves thousands
 of people."

Dichev said that school leavers in the country are 45,000 and
universities announce 46,000 vacancies. "We can't relay solely
on Bulgarian universities. If we decide to isolate ourselves
from the world and from global science, we will bring
universities back to the 19th century when they prepared
teachers and general specialists and major specialists would be
imported from abroad," he warned. LN/PP