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MoldovaEDUCATION, HEALTH, AND WELFARE
Education
In the decades prior to independence, the Moldavian
SSR's
education system made substantial progress toward being
available
to all citizens. At the beginning of the twentieth
century,
illiteracy had been common among Moldova's rural
population. But
by 1992, the adult literacy rate had risen to 96 percent.
In 1990
the mean duration of schooling was six years, and 30
percent of
the population aged fifteen and older had completed
general
secondary education.
Under the Soviet education system, the Moldavian SSR
had
parallel systems of Romanian-language and Russian-language
education through secondary school, although Russian was
seen as
the key to advancement. In 1990 a total of 614 preschools
were
taught in Romanian, 1,333 were taught in Russian, and 373
were
taught in both Romanian and Russian. There were 1,025
Romanianlanguage primary and secondary schools with 399,200
students; 420
Russian-language schools with 239,100 students; and 129
mixedlanguage schools with 82,500 students studying in the
Russian and
Romanian languages, with more than half of the students
studying
in Russian. Change occurred slowly at the university
level,
however, and 55 percent of students continued to study in
the
Russian language as of 1992.
Under Moldova's education system, ten years of basic
education are compulsory, followed by either technical
school or
further study leading to higher education. In the early
1990s,
the Moldovan government restored the Romanian language in
schools
and added courses in Romanian literature and history to
the
curriculum. The governments of Romania and Moldova
established
strong ties between their education systems; several
thousand
Moldovan students attended school in Romania, and the
Romanian
government donated textbooks to Moldova to replace books
from the
Soviet era.
As Moldovan society became more industrialized and more
complex under the Soviet regime, the role of higher
education
also expanded (although ethnic Russian and Ukrainian
students
were given preference in university admissions during the
Soviet
era). Although there were only ten students per 10,000
population
enrolled in institutions of higher education in 1940, this
number
increased to 120 per 10,000 population in 1992. In early
1995,
Moldova had ten institutions of higher education; four of
these
institutions had been established since independence. The
republic also maintained institutes of agriculture,
economics,
engineering, medicine, the arts, pedagogy, and physical
education.
Data as of June 1995
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