Education Minister Todor Tanev has backed amendments to the Education Act aimed at depriving specialized higher education institutions of the title university.

Tanev, as cited by the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, suggested that a number of existing provisions were outdated.

He insisted that law provided no definitions of “university”, “academy”, or “institute”, adding that the imprecision led to requests for bigger subsidy allocations.

Tanev suggested that the chaos had been exploited to the benefit of a number of “printing houses for diplomas.”

He said that he had no objections to the existing rating system for universities and that it would not undergo changes.

He insisted, however, that the state could not afford to support all universities but only the ones who excelled in training specialists in the respective spheres.