Romanian education under austerity: a critical discourse analysis ofcrisis talks and policy legitimation

This paper examines how austerity measures adopted in the Romanian educational system, in 2025, are discursively constructed through crisis talk -narratives that frame cuts and policy modifications as both inevitable and morally responsible.This research uses the critical discourse analysis method to analyse a corpus consisting of political speeches, public reactions of relevant stakeholders and legislative texts to identify hidden narratives and rhetorical strategies employed by the decisionmakers throughout the summer of 2025, that are serving as a means of normalizing budgetary restrictions applied for the educational sector.The analysis highlights how governmental actors try to legitimize austerity as both inevitable and morally responsible, presenting sacrifice as a duty that must be shared collectively by all members of the society.Meanwhile, counter-discourses voiced by trade unions, NGOs, and representatives of students emphasize the consequences of the measures, social harm, erosion of trust, and the loss of dignity for teachers and students.Findings of this study show that austerity in Romanian education is legitimized less through fiscal reasoning and more through a moralized scarcity discourse that presents solidarity, inevitability, and collective duty as common-sense truths.The paper represents a contribution to research on neoliberal education policies by demonstrating that austerity operates as a discursive mode of governance-one that defines what is feasible, narrows policy alternatives, and justifies resource redistribution in the name of efficiency, while also addressing a gap in the research that does not provide insights into the in-depth effects of austerity in education, besides the economic results.