Bulgaria’s higher educational institutions have announced hundreds of vacant places on courses in the 2018-2019 academic year – as European universities continue to lure away the country’s best students.
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.
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