West University of Timișoara

30 December 1944: Decree-Law no. 660

The establishment of the West University of Timișoara was a complex and long process. It was done in stages, in an internal and international political, social and economic context marked by World War II and the territorial resettlements caused by the loss of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and Hertsa region (in the north), as well as Southern Dobruja (in the south). 1940 brings major changes in the academic life of Timișoara. After the Second Vienna Award, which saw Northern Transylvania ceded to Hungary, the faculties of Agronomy, Theology and Sciences from Cluj relocated to Timișoara. Notable for the establishment of the future West University are the insistent and mobilizing approaches of the politician and culture man Sever Bocu who, through his humanistic and cultural policy ideas, exerted a strong influence in the Romanian society in Banat, between 1920 and 1945. Although the Faculty of Sciences returned after 1945 in Cluj, a good part of the academics from Cluj remained in Timișoara, such as Coriolan Drăgulescu, Mihail Ghermănescu, Gheorghe Th. Gheorghiu, Emilian Arghiriade, Ioan Curea, Gheorghe Silaș, Maria Neumann, Gheorghe Ostrogovich, Alexandru Cișmaș, Constantin Sălceanu and others, who were at the forefront of those who campaigned for the establishment of the West University, as the fourth university of the country.

The West University was formally established by Decree-Law no. 660 of 30 December 1944, promulgated by King Michael I. This act provided for the newly established institute to operate starting with the academic year 1944/1945 with the following specializations: Law, Letters and Philosophy, Sciences, Human Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Pharmacy and Theology. The transposition of the Decree into reality has provoked contradictory discussions and tensions caused by vainglory and rivalry both locally and regionally; six of the seven faculties of the future West University were claimed by other cities (Arad, Lugoj, Caransebeș), there was the intention of some local ethnic groups to impose a bilingual organization of university education, which endangered the creation and operation of a university with a unitary organizational structure in Timișoara.

The dissensions within the Ephoria of the West University, the increasingly hostile actions of the communist authorities, imposed by the Soviet occupiers, led to the annulment, in essence, of the provisions of the Royal Decree for the establishment of the country's fourth university. In 1945, the government of Petru Groza decreed that the West University would first be a Faculty of Medicine. Obstacles have multiplied. Local and government funding sources were insufficient and, in addition, their management was blamed. Sever Bocu is fired from Ephoria's leadership, which will eventually be dissolved.

1948–1962: Pedagogical Institute

In the following years, under the pressure of the process of Sovietization of Romania, through the forced transposition of the Soviet economic and cultural models in the USSR, the reorganization of higher education took place. Based on the Decree no. 175 of 3 August 1948 and the Decision no. 263327 of 25 October 1948 regarding the organization of the Romanian higher education, in Timișoara the three-year Pedagogical Institute with the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics was established, having the mission to prepare teachers for grades VIII–XI. The courses of the Pedagogical Institute began on 19 January 1949, in a modest space, with 82 students.

In the academic year 1952/1953, the duration of studies at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics was set at four years. An evening section also starts operating within the Pedagogical Institute. The academic year 1956/1957 marks a new and important stage in the development of the Institute. The Faculty of Philology was inaugurated, with a duration of studies of five years, distance learning was introduced at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, and from the following year, the duration of studies at this faculty becomes five years. A new group of young teachers with great potential arrives in Timisoara, submitting a memorandum to the ministry, requesting its transformation into a university, the separation of departments into distinct faculties and the elaboration by graduates of a diploma thesis. In 1957, the director of the Institute became rector, and the new institution was configured as an educational and cultural center worthy of consideration.

1962–1994: University of Timișoara

By the Decision of the Council of Ministers no. 999 of 27 September 1962, the memorandum submitted in 1956, which establishes the new organization status and the name of the University of Timișoara, is accepted. In the same year, the works start at the new university building, on Vasile Pârvan Boulevard, under the coordination of the architect Hans Fackelmann. His project was awarded by the State Committee for Construction, Architecture and Systematization (CSCAS) in 1964 and by the Union of Architects in Romania (UAR) in 1967.

In 1967/1968, the newly established Faculty of Economics was added, then the faculties of the three-year Pedagogical Institute. After a period of hybrid operation with specializations with study cycles of three, four and five years (1962–1967), the integration into a unitary university structure is completed. In 1970 there were 12 faculties, with 20 specializations. During the years 1962–1989, the evolution of the university was conditioned, under the strict control of the activities in the Romanian education, of the educational act and of professional training, by ministerial orders and decisions marked ideologically. The inconsistency of the program, with its alleged orientation towards modernization, has led to uncertainty and instability in university structures and activities. Faculties, sections, specializations, departments, disciplines were established and abolished, most often without any good motivation. By 1989, in the University of Timișoara there were only three profiles. The humanist profile, inextricably linked to the concept imagined by the interwar intellectuals, as fundamental to the West University, had become almost non-existent.

After the 1989 Revolution, the reorganization of the university and the democratization of education have raised issues of great importance to the new leadership of the faculties and the university. Tensions, turmoil and efforts to change also took place at the University of Timișoara. From the first days following the abolition of the totalitarian regime, the teachers dismissed the last leadership established by the Communist Party and replaced the rector appointed in October 1989. The philologist Eugen Todoran thus became the first rector of the university in the post-communist period. The academic year 1990/1991 opens in a modified framework, with new specializations and faculties: Fine Arts and Design, Physical Education and Sports, Chemistry, Geography, Biology, Psychology and Sociology, Law, Music and Theater Arts, the duration of schooling being established at five years.