>>508460611 (OP)quite a lot of combined factors. Our post-communist educational system was dismantled by 15+ successive Ministers of Education that wanted to reform just for the sake of it, without bringing anything good to the table - this has resulted in Romania scoring some of the worst numbers in any PISA tests in the last 10 years or so; brain drain effect - 6 millions Romanians have moved out of the country in the last 20 years, sure a lot of gippos and poor people but also the most qualified ones, essentially our country has been giving free education to the smartest around, only for them to leave the country and never come back as soon as they get their diplomas (this also ties in with corruption and low opportunity for good paying jobs within the system, because the system itself is filled with cheaters, politician's kids and lovers etc); increase in disparity between rural vs urban, major urban centers like Bucharest, Timisoara or Cluj are on par with other Western capitals in terms of income/education, but the rest of the country is quite literally stuck in the 1700s, with people having virtually no financial opportunity or good education in a 40km radius of their poor village); very low %GDP spending for Education, like one of the lowest in the EU, less than <1%/year for the past 20+ years, our teachers are some of the worst paid in the Union (if you're not a university professor, our monthly salary as a teacher with 7+ years experience is 4000 lei/month max, that's basically 600-700 euros/month to get demolished by retarded ADHD zoomers, most young teachers usually quit the system after 5 years or transfer to private schools for better money); and I could go on.
tl;dr Romania is the retarded-smart country that simultaneously scores some of the lowest IQ points in the world but also gets gold and silver medals yearly in mathematics and robotics competitions for high-schoolers. Not even joking.