The Evolution of Artistic Higher Education in Communist Romania between 1948 and 1989

Higher education represented an important opportunity for the communist regime to train specialized staff in order to strengthen its political control of all the aspects of society, but also to support economic development and the creation of a new society1. Economic development was heavily concentrated on the process of industrialization, which demanded (technical) specialized staff; therefore, no wonder that higher education underwent important developments accordingly. The number of institutions and students in the fields of technical, agronomical and economic studies grew to unprecedented shares before communism. But how did the other fields of higher education, such as artistic higher education (AHE), develop in this context? How much did the communist regime and its Abstract: Although communist regimes gave priority to technical higher education, artistic higher education also received a small, but constant share of the allocated study places and resources. This study outlines both the general features of this field, and its statistical evolution. After 1948, artistic higher education (music, fine and decorative arts, film, theatre and television) went through many changes in order to adapt to communist requirements. This paper presents some of the most important changes, what caused them, as well as their consequences. The statistical reconstruction of artistic higher education mainly focuses on the last 30 years of communism, on full-time studies and on four important indicators: total number of students, freshmen, graduates and total number of teaching staff.