Abstract:

After two years of reforms that involved adapting to the pandemic's imperatives, higher education in Romania must face a new challenge: the exodus of refugee students from Ukraine towards universities in neighbouring countries. The 2022-2023 academic year started with the challenge of the integration and assimilation of a large number of relocated students in Romania as well as with their acceptance for remote studies, this being the case of those who could not leave Ukraine for various reasons (male students mainly). The integration process of Ukrainian students is as necessary to happen quickly and naturally as it is complicated to anticipate the diversity of issues that must be managed effectively to support them in their desire and need to continue their academic route despite the war that has marked their life. The present article is intended to be a presentation of the problematic aspects and the diversity of cases that had to be treated and solved individually in order to successfully complete the integration of students in the Romanian academic environment altogether with the necessity of building a supportive environment during both curricular and extracurricular activities in the same time. The diversity of these problems derives from the fact that the refugee students are of various ethnicities and represent diverse cultural and linguistic areas with significant differences from the Romanian language and culture, and in this way, in addition to the administrative problems for which solutions must be found, Romanian teachers and students must engage with tolerance and tact in the process of assimilation of Ukrainian students so as not to further deepen the traumas caused by the exodus imposed by the war.

Keywords:

Integration, support, barriers, higher education, refugee.