State universities in Moldova are opening 9.013 budget-funded places for this summer’s admissions. The government approved the state order for the 2026–2027 academic year on July 16, and the largest slice goes, as last year, to a single field: teacher training. For a high-school graduate from Ungheni, the figure is no abstraction from Chișinău — it is the very door that opens on July 27, in a district entering the new school year with dozens of empty teaching posts.
Where the 9.013 places go
The bulk of admissions is made up of undergraduate and integrated studies: 5.380 budget-funded places. Of these, about 20,5% are reserved for the Education Sciences field — around 1.100 places just for future teachers, according to Triunghi.md’s calculation on the percentage announced by the ministry. It is, year after year, the largest share of the state order.
Education sciences remain the priority field of the state order this year as well. The education system needs well-trained teachers. Dan Perciun, Minister of Education and Research
The remaining places break down as follows: 2.771 at master’s level, 504 in residency and clinical specialization (489 plus 15, 69 more than last year, amid a rising number of graduates in the Health field), 225 in doctoral studies and 133 for foreign citizens. The state also raised the number of specially designated places for graduates from the left bank of the Nistru and from Bender — from 262 to 280 — and increased allocations in engineering, architecture, veterinary medicine, forestry and the exact sciences, fields with high demand for specialists.
One new element for those eyeing a master’s degree: for the first time, only candidates with a general admission average of at least 7,00 will be able to compete for budget-funded places at the second cycle.
Why it matters specifically for Ungheni
The priority for teacher training reads differently from Ungheni district. Here, the official list of vacant posts, finalized on June 5, shows 73 uncovered teaching posts across 21 schools and kindergartens — from the town’s high schools to the village gymnasiums. It is the fifth-largest shortfall in the country. The most sought-after specializations — preschool education, mathematics, physics, Romanian language, primary education — are exactly the fields the state order funds as a priority.
In other words, the state is paying precisely to train the people Ungheni’s schools need most. Only the link is not automatic. Budget-funded places are national, not district-level: nothing guarantees that a graduate trained on a budget place will come back to teach in Ungheni. Minister Dan Perciun summed up the problem in May, on a TV show — Moldova, overall, does not lack teachers; it has a geographic distribution problem: teaching staff cluster in Chișinău and the big cities, while the districts remain uncovered. More places in teacher training therefore fill a national reservoir that Ungheni draws from only with difficulty.
What does connect the two ends is a concrete incentive, detailed in a separate article: a young person who chooses to teach in a district school receives a one-off allowance of up to 375.000 lei. Today’s budget place and Ungheni’s vacant post could, in theory, be the two ends of the same road — if the graduate follows it all the way through.
How and by when to apply
Admissions start on July 27 and run, as in recent years, entirely online, on the national eAdmitere.gov.md platform, with an electronic signature or, failing that, with support from university representatives. The main session’s calendar is tight:
- July 27 – August 1: submission of files;
- August 8: interim results;
- August 8–12: confirmation of the place, with original documents;
- August 14: final results;
- August 15–24: supplementary session, for the remaining places.
Each candidate can apply simultaneously to a maximum of three universities and can choose up to three programs at each. Places are distributed in descending order of average — and here the six graduates from the municipality of Ungheni who scored a perfect 10 at this year’s Baccalaureate, the second-highest city count in the country after Chișinău, start with a real head start.
The second door: across the Prut, and it closes earlier
For a border district, admissions at home are not the only budget option this summer. The Romanian state offers, every year, for young people from the Republic of Moldova, around 5.000 tuition-free university places across the Prut, through the “Romanians everywhere” program. And the closest major university center, Iași, is about 45 kilometers from Ungheni. At the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, online registration for 2026 runs from July 13 to 18 — meaning it closes before the Moldovan session even opens. Anyone eyeing both options has to watch the calendars closely, because they do not overlap. We have gathered the details on documents, scholarships and conditions in a separate guide.
The two doors do not exclude each other, but they do not lead to the same place either. Every young person who leaves for studies — to Chișinău or across the Prut — is an open question for the community: will they come back or not. In the 2025–2026 academic year, universities in the Republic of Moldova had 62,9 thousand students, almost 7% more than the previous year, a sign that the offer at home is, in turn, still growing. What a graduate from Ungheni chooses this summer — a budget place in Chișinău, a tuition-free one in Iași, or the teaching post waiting at home — depends, in the end, on the grade in their diploma and on the deadlines they manage to catch.