Studenți și profesori ai Universității din Iași la studii în străinătate (deceniul șapte al secolului XIX) (I)

In the mid 19th century, the Western universities held the monopoly of education of the Romanian cultural and scientific elite and certain dependency of the local academics on great European universities, for teachers’ training or retraining, was maintained even after the foundation of the two modern universities in Iaşi (1860) and Bucharest (1864). During that period the Romanian education system faced several deficiencies (e.g. outdated infrastructure and curricula; absence of an audience ready to receive knowledge; poorly trained teachers etc.) so that, because of the lack of an alternative, serious instruction in European institutions was necessary and also preferred by the Romanian young people eager of education. The Romanian authorities in educational system used to select young people and send them abroad to study in educational or social domains that contributed directly to the modernization and proper functioning of the state. The policy of training abroad was at its climax during the period of the foundation of the two universities, in Iaşi and Bucharest, especially for the legitimation and increase of visibility and quality of local institutions. Since for a long period of time the faculties were not complete because of the absence of some departments (determined by shortage of budget or staff), several specializations were not available in the country and the phenomenon of scholarships for studies abroad was maintained with varying intensity throughout the modern period. In fact, the present research deals mainly with the Romanian scholars abroad as they were target for recruiting teachers for higher education. They were sent to study abroad especially for being recruited in the country for academic training, a fact which determined their high interest in obtaining a bachelor or PhD degree, which allowed them to join the well paid elite. For more than a century, the Romanian researchers became aware of the importance of the thematic universe of studying abroad; the subject has been and still remains fascinating for the history of education and the history of elite and cultural transfers. However, the investigations were not very efficient for reasons mainly related to the lack of a uniform methodology and chronological widespread of sources (and their dissipation in various European universities). The best research in this field should be accomplished in two stages. By collective effort and appeal to sociological methods, the first stage, chro