Breaking news! Exclusive English content on higher education coming to you
Adea Kondirolli
Lexues t’dashtun, na falni veç pak, sa t’ju kallxojmë ktyne t’jashtit ku i kena bazat.
If you have been following our exclusive content on Tempulli i Dijes (Temple of Knowledge) newspaper and you have been feeling left out because you don’t know Albanian (you should learn btw), your misery ends now, our dear international friends. Yours truly, Adea, will provide an overview (this one will be annual, but in the future maybe more frequently, idk, depends) of all the things that happened in higher education in Kosovo during 2020, and ORCA’s work during this year.
Buckle up.
Despite a global pandemic that halted MANY processes globally and locally, Kosovo higher education was quite productive (scandals wise) this year.
We started the year with a political standstill, since after the October 6 elections, it took us four months to vote the new government, led by Bini-boy (Albin Kurti, Vetevendosje), in coalition with Dulla-boy (Avdullah Hoti, LDK). LDK got the Ministry of Education, and all was well.
In the meantime, ORCA conducted research on transparency and accountability in all public universities, publishing two reports in January 2020. The first report dealt with finance management, specifically the personal income of academic staff with managing positions in public universities. Contrary to our expectations, the report was not dry, and produced sensational data. We found that some rectors of public universities, and some deans of academic units in those universities get paid over 2000, some even over 3000 euros per month. Quite a lot more than our President or Prime Minister. The second report dealt with transparency of internal management of the universities. Based on our “plucked out of thin air” criteria, we looked at the public universities whether they have 27 documents that we deemed important for the functioning of those universities. Then we graded the universities on their transparency, with 6 out of 7 universities passing the exam, which was an improvement from the first time we did this research one year before.
Intermezzo: we now have an English version of our website so like and subscribe, or just look at it I guess. You can find our reports in English, our mission, and our financial statements. Enjoy.
Anyway, in February, ORCA was especially productive, publishing a total of three reports. The first report looked at the academic integrity of the University of Peja, and we found that there are a total number of 23 credible scientific papers in that University, for 33 professors. 70% of the professors in this university do not justify their academic ranks based on the criteria of the number of papers required to be elected or promoted.
The same research was conducted in the University of Prizren, where we found that they have 55 papers from 56 professors in total. 64% of the professors of the University of Prizren do not justify their academic ranks based on the same criteria aforementioned.
Then we published a report based on our monitoring of the State Council for Recognition [of diplomas obtained outside the country] in the National Academic Recognition and Information Center (NARIC Kosova). In this report we provided information on the types of decisions taken during 2019 in this council, and the challenges they faced, with proper recommendations. Peruse at your own pleasure.
ORCA also picked a bone with the (now-former) German ambassador Christian Heldt, when we found out that he had sent an email to the Kosovo Accreditation Agency, telling them to accredit the programs of a certain private college in Kosovo with German investors. You can read the screenshots of the email in page 4 (Kronika e Zeze).
In the meantime, European countries were facing the first reported cases of the novel coronavirus. Kosovo was still unaffected, and there was a temporary bliss during February with the formation of the new government. The Ministry of Education dropped the Technology from its name, becoming the Ministry of Education and Science. The new cabinet was busy meeting ambassadors and each other during this month, based on their activity page.
In March, ORCA published a report on our monitoring of the State Quality Council, which is the board of the Kosovo Accreditation Agency. The report offered explanations on the work of the SQC, and the decisions it took during the year 2019. The report ended with the challenges this institution faces and our recommendations to deal with them. Spicy.
*menacing music starts*
then, the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in Kosovo on March 13. The government quickly locks down the country, banning flights, closing borders, telling people to work from home, and closing universities and all schools.
Hasha-boy (our former president, Hashim Thaci) asks for declaration of state of emergency, which essentially meant that he would be making the decisions on how to cope with the coronavirus pandemic in our country. Bini-boy refuses, Dulla-boy gets angry, parliament goes in session, lots of memes are born, and Bini-boy’s government is voted out on March 25, with a total of 50 days in government.
Bini-boy continues governing for an additional two months until the new government led by Dulla-boy is voted in on June 3.
Higher education was quite quiet during the lockdown months, with online classes, and no major developments in legislation. Yours truly was locked away in England, drowning her sorrows in Ben and Jerry’s.
On May 12, NGO Cohu’s newspaper Preportr published an investigation that showed that private colleges in Kosovo had registered students in unaccredited programs, and now these students cannot confirm their diplomas in the National Academic Recognition and Information Center (NARIC Kosovo), a requirement from universities abroad if they wish to study there. Another thing these private colleges didn’t do, is send a registry of students annually to the Ministry, and thus those students do not appear in the Ministry of Education’s registries of students. Goody. One private college referred to the issue of them registering students in unaccredited programs as “making a mountain out of a molehill”. Sure, sweetie.
June 4 marks the start of a new era in 2020 (with January-March being paleozoic, March-June being Mesozoic, June-November being Cenozoic). He who shall not be named is appointed Minister of Education.
In July ORCA presented its annual extraordinary never-seen-before amazing fascinating report on academic integrity in the University of Prishtina. We found that 55% of the professors in UP do not justify their academic ranks based on the criteria of academic publishing. We also found that 25% of all papers produced by current professors in UP were published in the years 2017-2019, which also marks the years ORCA has been producing reports and advocating for academic integrity and scientific publishing. Not to blow our own trumpet, but #facts.
Around the same time the University of Prishtina announced fresh elections for the managing positions such as rector, senators, deans, etc. A stress-filled process filled with “I will die on this hill” declarations, produced a shortlist of three academically sound and ethically clean professors. Ultimately, Naser Sahiti was chosen as rector, and several new professors who justify their ranks were chosen as his vice-rectors, and several more were chosen as deans, producing a decent managing staff.
Naturally, there were some hiccups in the process, as they tend to happen when politically appointed people are involved. The Steering Council of the University of Prishtina consists of 9 people. Five are elected by the Senate of the university among the list of academic staff. The remaining four are appointed by the Minister of Education. When the new rector proposed his team of vice-rectors, the Steering Council were suddenly “too tired” to vote, and kept delaying the process. To this day, they still haven’t voted the fifth vice-rector.
In October, ORCA re-conducted research on transparency and accountability in all public universities, publishing two reports. The first report dealt with finance management, specifically the personal income of academic staff with managing positions in public universities. We found that some rectors of public universities, and some deans of academic units in those universities get paid over 2000, some even over 3000 euros per month. Quite a lot more than our President or Prime Minister. But there were slight improvements from previous research conducted on the same topic. The second report dealt with transparency of internal management of the universities. Again, as in the previous report of the same topic, we looked at the public universities whether they have 27 documents that we deemed important for the functioning of those universities. Then we graded the universities on their transparency, with 6 out of 7 universities passing the exam, and the University of Prishtina passing with flying colours (27/27). Now we have to find some more ‘necessary documents’, so they don’t drop the ball on this.
Ultimately, it was an eventful year, incredibly stressful, filled with political games and filth, but ORCA managed to produce 12 reports/papers, it gave out 6 grants to student organizations and groups, held 13 workshops on academic integrity and corruption in higher education for students, with 278 students participating in all of our 2020 activities.
