Babes-Bolyai University (UBB) in Cluj-Napoca is ranked 81 in the top 100 universities in the world in the category of academic debate. Position was won by UBB in 2009 after attending four contests.
History
Universities appeared in Europe in the eleventh century, their birth causing different expectations: enabling life through knowledge, for many people, ensuring influential cultural elites; strengthening domination for those who lead; upward social mobility for studies, improve well-being for city dwellers university. Frederick Barbarossa clearly expressed in Authentica Habita (1155) belief that “through science world light and subjects life is collected for submission to God and his servant or king.”
University Cluj stand onto a long evolution of the attempts to establish an institution of higher education in Transylvania – an area attractive to Western Europeans and an arena of religious confrontation and later policies related to the history of our continent.
This development begins with the intention of Prince John Sigismund in 1567 to establish an academy of studies in Sebes (Alba), but gets a first concrete measure through Stephen Báthory initiative to set up the sequence founding of universities in Bratislava, Budapest and Tarnovo, in 1581, a college in Cluj, under the control of the Jesuits and having as rector the Italian Possevino. This college was later disbanded and Protestants and Unitarians founded other colleges, in 1692 Gabriel Bethlen established the Calvinist College in Alba Iulia, with study of theology, philosophy and language, which was lead by Alstedt. Catholics took the initiative again and established in 1688, an academy in Cluj, under the tutelage of the Jesuits. In a confessional reconciliation effort, in 1776, Empress Maria Theresa founded a university in Cluj in German language. But this attempt did not survive, Joseph II replacing it with the famous Piarist College, with teaching in Latin.
In the context of the 1848 revolutioin it was made explicit the issue of founding an university with teaching in romanian language. The Hungarian minister Eotvos proposed in 1868, the creation of a university in Cluj with teaching in Hungarian, Romanian and German, and some of the Romanian elite supported the proposal. But in 1872, the authorities established the University of Cluj exclusively in Hungarian, which has sparked complaints of the Romanian majority. At the end of the First World War, amid the Great Union, Cluj University, also the University of Strasbourg and Bratislava, was taken over by state authorities, becoming an institution of unified Romania. On 12 May 1919, the Romanian University of Cluj was founded, whose courses were inaugurated on November 3, 1919, by Vasile Parvan, with the lecture “The duty of our life”, for, at February 1, 1920, King Ferdinand I to proclaim it solemnly. The new university was laid by the Romanian sovereign into the lined old motto, carved in marble, into the central building “dedicated to truth, on justice paths – only leading to consistency between the various tribes of the world – the establishment of high culture will might help people and humanity, honoring both to and honoring us through his scientific work”.
In 1940, as a result of territorial revision imposed by Germany and Italy at that time, Romanian university was moved to Sibiu and Timisoara and Hungarian university was brought from Szeged to Cluj. After World War II, with the repeal of the Vienna Award, Romanian university returned to Cluj and soon took the name “Babes”. In 1945 of the Romanian authorities have established Hungarian university in Cluj, with the “Bolyai” name. The two universities were reunited in 1959 under the name Babes-Bolyai University, with Romanian and Hungarian language education. Subsequently, under the Ceausescu regime, studies in Hungarian were gradually reduced.
December 1989 found in Babes-Bolyai university a very active movement of young academics and students recover in professional and democratic tradition of the university and institution reform. The starting point of the new dynamics of the university was the proclamation “For a new University of Superior Dacia ” and energetic action, in consequence, of many Romanian, Hungarian, German, Hebrew academics, dominated by the concern to restore sovereignty and professionalism in university to integrate the values of the free world.
Contact
Address: Mihail Kogâlniceanu street, no. 1, RO – 400084, Cluj-Napoca
Telefon: 0264 – 40.53.00
Fax: 0264 – 59.19.06
Source: UBB Cluj Napoca
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