site.btaAt Sofia Conference, PM Denkov Highlights Benefits of University Mergers

Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov on Wednesday highlighted the usefulness of merging higher education institutions as a means to improve the quality of education, scientific activity and cooperation with businesses. Addressing participants at the Innovation Nexus conference, organised by the Ministry of Innovation and Growth, the Ministry of Education and the Embassy of Finland, the Prime Minister said that this was how countries such as Norway and Finland, which had similar demographics and a more successful university education system, were able to adapt. The forum is taking place in Sofia Tech Park.

"Bulgaria is changing fast. The most remarkable changes are in research, innovation, cooperation of businesses and higher education. There are many reasons for this. We were also able to use the contribution of the Bulgarian EU Commissioner for Innovation. This has helped us to progress, but at the same time we retain characteristics from the past," Denkov said. He gave as an example Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", which was established as an institution doing science in many fields, but after the advent of communism and the imposition of the Soviet educational model, it was assigned a narrow specialization, while for other disciplines separate universities and institutes were created. He assessed this model as ineffective from today's perspective because it loses competitiveness and leads to missed opportunities. 

"Thinking about how we can help each other, we met with ambassadors from Norway and Finland - countries with similar demographics that manage to do great science and educational product. We have seen how by bringing together three universities with different profiles Finland has created one successful and prosperous university - Aalto. Our goal is not to copy the foreign experience, but to get acquainted with it and adapt the main success factors," Prime Minister Denkov added.