I stumbled across an article about <a href="http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=128072&amp;utm_source" target="_blank">Bulgarians studying and earning university degrees abroad</a>.  This is of course a topic that interests me. I teach in a high school in Bulgaria and I worked in higher education in the States.

It's been clear to me since I moved to Bulgaria three years ago that as a Bulgarian student if you can, you study abroad. At my high school for example, I would guess that 95% (or more) of our students study in the US, the UK or Europe. Our students just simply don't stay in Bulgaria for university.

In my mind this happens for two major reasons. The perception is that you can get a better education abroad <em>and</em> there is a sense that are more opportunities in the long term for students who are educated in Western Europe and America.

Apparently, more than half of Bulgarian students are interested in studying outside of Bulgaria and apply to foreign schools.  That's a huge number. The article doesn't make it clear how many percentage wise actually end up abroad and how many of these students actually earn degrees but the numbers are big enough to give you pause.

If 50% of Bulgarian students are applying abroad, what does this say about the state of higher education in Bulgaria? And what does this suggest about student's faith in the system?

However instead of addressing this questions, the article took an interesting albeit surprising turn.
<blockquote>Bulgaria's Education Minister Sergey Ignatov, a former President of the New Bulgarian University in Sofia, the largest private Bulgarian university, stated that Bulgarian universities should be able to start opening branches abroad in order to attract more foreign students.

"Bulgaria can contribute a lot in terms of intellectual and educational product, and it is about time that we start thinking about the Bulgarian lobby abroad. Higher education is also a business; we cannot expect that it will bring us a rain of gold in the future years but we shouldn't neglect it," Ignatov stated.</blockquote>
How is this supposed to help solve the problem?

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