While Education Minister Daniel Vulchev was promising that 10 million leva from the 2009 budget would be allocated to the best Bulgarian universities for scientific research, business executives were complaining that college students were unprepared to enter the labour market, Dnevnik daily reported.

Business executives called for a national evaluation system with which to determine the level of education and skills acquired at local higher education facilities, during a roundtable discussing the relations between business and the quality of education on November 25 2008. Rectors from various schools also took a stand for the implementation of a rating scale, based upon which a given school should receive a specific amount of state subsidy.

The Ministry of Education is working on a project connected to its human resources programme for the development of the rating system, which will go in effect sometime in 2009.

Sonya Slavcheva from Globul, a mobile phone operator, said, as quoted by Dnevnik, that most Bulgarian students did not have cultivated in them an attitude of work, let alone problems due to the questionable quality of their education. Slavcheva said that she expected adequate department programmes that would meet the needs of the business.

Miglena Uzounova from Mobiltel, another large phone operator, agreed that young Bulgarians did not have good work habits and that their motivation was quite weak.

"Some of them cannot write or read correctly. Businesses make attempts to penetrate the schools for higher education through a number of internships and other programmes, but this proves to be a difficult task," Uzounova has said.

A survey conducted by the Bulgarian Human Resources Management and Development Association in co-operation with Pari daily also indicated general discontent with the efficiency of Bulgarian higher education. Close to 60 per cent of the interviewed companies said that freshly graduated students did not rank above the average, mediocre level of skills and knowledge.

Human resources specialists think that the gaps are due to student negligence and to the outdated teaching methods used in Bulgarian institutions.

Vulchev has said that the weakest link is the curriculum. According to him, such is composed in a way to serve the interests of the faculty, and not the students.

"We drag on with courses that have long lost their meaning. How do you motivate students with studies or ideas that have no connection to reality whatsoever?" the minister said.