This report examines the development of higher education and the process of educational reform in Romania through the 19th and 20th centuries and provides statistical data on the numbers of students, graduates, and academic staff that existed during specific time periods. Chapters cover: (1) the founding of the higher education system and its development up to World War II; (2) the impact of World War II on the academic life and institutions in Romania; (3) an explanation of the "People's" model of higher education and 1948 reform; (4) a critical evaluation of the "People's" model and the attempt to modernize in the 1960s and early 1970s; and (5) an examination of higher education policy under the Ceausescu regime and the consequences of these policies in undermining Romanian higher education in the late 1970s and 1980s. This exploration shows how the institution of higher education in Romania, since its foundation in the second half of the 19th century and up till the recent democratic revolution in which students and some academics played an important role, has been both a hot-bed for political change, as well as a tool used by those in power for other purposes than society's educational, professional, cultural, and scholarly development. (Contains 110 endnotes.) (GLR)