How many Romanian students are studying abroad: 22,000, 35,000 or 50,000?

Romania does not have an institution that centralises data on the number of Romanian students studying at universities abroad, and figures reported by NGOs in the educational field vary. Therefore, whereas Integral Programe Educationale organisation announced 50,000 Romanian students were studying abroad last year, the representatives of Educativa NGO say that that figure is much lower, of about 22,000 Romanians, based on a series of European statistics.

The Education Ministry does not have any information about the number of Romanian students continuing their education at foreign universities, because university education is not part of the mandatory education.

“I believe only 3 or 4% of the total number of Romanian students go to study abroad, so that the figure cannot be higher than 30,000-35,000 students,” believes Mircea Miclea, former Education Minister and chairman of the Presidential Commission for Education, which helped draft the education law.

The figures on the number of students supplied by Grupul Educativa, which provides advisory services for admission to universities abroad through Edmundo, are based on the centralised statistics of UNESCO, OECD, Institute for International Education (number of students studying in the US) and DAAD (number of students studying in Germany).