UK remains one of the top destinations attracting Bulgarian students away from their home institutions. Picture: World Education Forum.

Top universities in Bulgaria have announced hundreds of vacant places for students – while foreign institutions, especially in Britain and The Netherlands, attract some of the country’s best graduates.

Sofia University, the highest-ranking Bulgarian higher-education institution, on Friday said it had over 850 places after three clearings.

Most of the vacancies are in humanities programs like Religion in Europe (44 unfilled vacancies), History and Theology (43 each), Geography and in Slavonic Studies.

Some of the most popular specialisations, such as Law, have also failed to attract prospective students to fill the planned numbers, as did many natural and applied science courses.

Last year, 348 places remained untaken after the fourth, final clearing at the university.

Other top institutions also did not fill their state-sponsored quotas in certain specializations. The Technical University of Sofia will have a clearing for 95 vacant places in the Energetics, Mechanical Engineering and in the Electronics, Electrical Machines and Automation courses.

The University of Plovdiv has also published a list of 61 programs that will accept students after the last clearing.

Meanwhile, foreign institutions continue to attract Bulgarian high-school graduates.

Over 1,200 students are expected to start university studies in the UK this year, according to Nikolay Hristanov, coordinator of the Higher Education program of the World Education Forum, which promotes international education opportunities.

Hristanov told BIRN that Britain remains the top destination and – with Brexit looming – is attracting a huge number of students wanting to “catch the last train” before the rules and fees for foreign students in the UK potentially change after March 2019.

“In the last two years, 2,080 people applied, down from about 2,300 in the year of the Brexit referendum,” the education specialist noted.

Other desirable student destinations include The Netherlands, where Hristanov’s organisation notes an 11-per-cent yearly increase of applicants.

A 2017 survey of the National Audit Office found that about 30,000 Bulgarian students study overall, with about 17 per cent going to study abroad.

“Top high-school students are seeking prestige and are attracted by the good material base of the institutions and especially by the flexibility of the programs and their business partnerships,” says Hristanov, noting that such features are largely missing in Bulgaria.

“It is essential not to try and compete with foreign universities, but to turn back to the needs of Bulgarian society,” educational expert Ivan Gospodinov, from the Education without Backpacks organization, said.

To him, reform of higher education should be the long-term goal, while coordination between the needs of business, the education ministry and the institutes of higher learning about their shared priorities is the key.

Apart from competition from foreign institutions, Bulgaria’s private academies are also luring students from state-sponsored universities.

Svetlin Nakov, creator of one of the largest and most popular private institutions – SoftUni, which prepares thousands of programmers, says the state has taken a counter-productive approach by offering more funding when there is a lack of applicants.

“The state orders more government-sponsored places than they actually need. To raise the quality, you need to reduce the numbers by half. Then, for every place in a university funded by the state, there will be two candidates,” Nakov told BIRN.

To him, this would lead to the inevitable closure of courses, departments and even universities – but the alternative is much worse.

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