Annex 19:

3TA: Master Program of Local Finance and Administration at Cluj, Romania

1. Project description

2.  Project purposes and goals 

            According to the experience at Babes Bolyai University in Cluj, previous programs of the Public Administration Faculty and results from research conducted by staff in the field of local finance have demonstrated that local public administrations in Central and Eastern Europe, in general, and Romanian local administrations, in particular, are not prepared for the financial autonomy required by the evolving legal framework.

            Because of this fact, the primary purpose of the project was to develop a local finance—mainly public finance—curriculum for the planned Master of Local Finance Administration program. The curriculum should satisfy both local needs and international trends (European Union). Therefore, the project should identify the major elements of the public finance/administration programs in Romania, Europe and the USA, and incorporate them into the new program based on their compatibility with local needs.

The project implementation was divided in four phases: first evaluation, research of the local needs, creation of the international master programs database, and second evaluation.

3. Project realization

Some problems occurred during the project realization. The project started with a delay due to the selection of partners and communication problems. In general, communication deficiencies persisted during the entire project. In addition, the assigned Hungarian partner quit the project at half-time. In spite of this, the final planned outcomes were achieved.

4. Project outputs, outcomes and impacts

The main planned outcome: the curriculum was prepared according to expectations. The structure of the new curriculum was prepared on the basis of recommendations from the final report of the American Society for Public Administration’s (ASPA) Section on Budgeting and Financial Management Task Force on Curriculum. Over 30 academics and practitioners joined the task force, representing many of the most prominent graduate schools in public administration and virtually all levels of government.

The program of Babes-Bolyai University has two separate parts: the first two semesters include courses of general public administration (the core courses), while the third and the fourth semesters are devoted exclusively to financial management and budgeting courses. In addition, one course from the core program is an introduction to public finance. Thus, the proportion of finance-related courses exceeds 50 percent of the total.

As the outcome, the program has started in 2003 and has had a good impact on both the local and regional levels. The responsible department is at this moment looking forward to cooperating with other universities and NGOs from Romania, Hungary and the USA to find professionals interested in developing some fundamental courses such as Financial and Fiscal Decentralization, Financial Strategies and Policies for Local Government. It is also in advanced negotiations with the Budapest University of Economic Science and Public Administration in order to give a joint degree at the Master level which makes our program more attractive for Romanian and Central European graduate students.

The Master of Local Finance is a new initiative, and the first in Romania. The lack of prior Romanian experience makes foreign experience extremely valuable. Having professionals from Hungary and the United States share their view and experience on public finance master curriculum helped in laying the foundation of our master program. In general, teaching materials and curricula from the USA were useful in creating the core theoretical part of the program, while experiences of similar Hungarian initiatives helped in focusing on specific aspects of Central and Eastern European public finance. The Romanian initiative is unique even at the international level. Neither the programs in the US nor in Hungary focus exclusively on local (public) finance. US and Hungarian programs are usually public administration programs with public finance concentration.