– Foreign degrees in Bulgaria can be obtained through 77 joint programs
– 24 Bulgarian universities offer joint programs in 24 professional fields
– Almost 5 200 students have studied in joint programs in the spring of 2022
The information on the number and type of joint programs with foreign Higher Education Institutions has been collected for the purposes of the Bulgarian University Ranking System in June-July 2022. These data were provided and verified by the universities themselves.
The term „joint programs“ involves the following forms of student training cooperation between Bulgarian Higher Education Institutions and foreign universities and/or accrediting institutions:
- Agreements for combined educational activity with foreign universities providing for the award of double degrees and/or joint degrees.
- Education Franchise Agreements with foreign universities.
- Accreditations from foreign accreditation agencies for separate professional fields studied in Bulgarian universities or foreign accreditation of an entire Bulgarian university.
In addition to the type of the joint program, the information also contains the name of the foreign partner university and the country, language of tuition, majors and professional field, as well whether the training is in a Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD program.
As a whole, 24 Bulgarian universities offer a total of 77 joint programs, in which some 5 200 students and 64 PhD students have studied in the spring of 2022.
The oldest active joint program was created back in 1990 by the Technical University of Sofia and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and provides German language education in General Mechanical Engineering for obtaining both Bachelor and Master degrees. An interesting fact is that the Technical University – Sofia has also two of the newest joint programs launched in 2022 together with seven European universities (with majors in telecommunications and mechanics). The New Bulgarian University also launched a new joint program in 2022, with the University of York – UK (major in English language and professional communication).
The greatest number of joint programs have been launched by the Sofia University (10) and the Technical University of Sofia (10), followed by the Higher School of Management – Varna (8), New Bulgarian University (6), Agricultural University – Plovdiv (5) and South-West University – Blagoevgrad (5). The largest share of students study in joint programs in the American University, where all students obtain two degrees (a Bulgarian and a US one). Seven universities offer doctoral training in joint programs.
More than half of the joint programs involve teaching in English, but numerous programs also offer tuition in Bulgarian, Russian, German, French, etc. A number of the joint programs are with universities from EU member countries such as Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Greece; however, there exist many joint programs with other countries like United Kingdom, USA, Russia, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, etc.
A total of 24 different professional fields are covered, with most joint programs focused on the following fields: Economics (17), Administration and Management (11), Tourism (10), Communication and Computer Technology (7), Philology (7), Informatics and Computer Sciences (6), General Engineering (6).
A comprehensive list of all joint programs with foreign universities.
The Bulgarian University Ranking System for 2022 has been updated by a team from OSI-S Consortium (Open Society Institute – Sofia and Sirma Solutions) under a contract with the Ministry of Education and Science.
The ranking system is available online at https://rsvu.mon.bg
