Higher Education Reform in the Balkans
The Bologna Process lays out a blueprint for European-wide reform of colleges and universities. Can it surmount existing traditions and structures in Macedonia?
By Anthony W. Morgan
Struggling economies, outdated academic cultural traditions, and obsolete organizational structures are among the problems facing higher education reformers in the Balkans today. Change comes hard there despite difficult financial circumstances that elsewhere might provide the impetus for reform. Yet governmental and university leaders are finding common ground in the Bologna Process—a major initiative to reform higher education throughout the greater European area.
This article focuses on this common ground and the resulting reforms in one Balkan nation, Macedonia, and it places the changes in the broader context of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Russia. I make my observations based on my involvement in projects in Macedonia for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank. I also draw on my extensive work in Eastern Europe and with the Salzburg Seminar, an organization established in 1947 to promote global dialogue on issues of international concern.
Macedonia, one of six former republics of the former Yugoslavia, has only two public universities. One of them, Sts. Cyril and Methodius University, in the capitol city of Skopje, is dominant in size and prestige. It has twenty-four of the country's thirty faculties (units comparable to U.S. departments or, in some cases, colleges or schools). The remaining faculties are at St. Kliment Ohridski University, whose principal campus is in Bitola.
The universities' combined enrollment in 2002 was 44,710. That number represents a 64 percent increase since 1994. Like most other Balkan countries, Macedonia has a "unitary system," meaning that non-university-level programs and faculties, such as the faculty of tourism and catering at Bitola, are an integral part of these universities; they are not housed in separate nonuniversity institutions. Private universities were authorized only in 2000 by changes to the Higher Education Law, but they are now growing rapidly, with enrollments estimated at about 10,000. These private institutions have become the primary access point for underrepresented ethnic Albanian students. One of the two largest private institutions, Tetovo University, is in the process of becoming an accredited public university; the other, South Eastern European University, continues to expand rapidly with a multiethnic student population.
Life is not easy for anyone in Macedonia. The official unemployment rate was 32 percent in 2002, and the poverty rate hovers around 25 percent. For ethnic Albanians, who constitute about a quarter of the population, the unemployment rate is about 50 percent. Monthly wages for all Macedonian workers in 2002 averaged $630 in U.S. dollars. In the broader region, Albania's workers earned the least ($332 a month), while Croatia's earned the most ($1,357 a month). Wages for academics in Macedonia are below the Macedonian average wage.
Macedonia, like many other countries in economic transition, is under pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to bring its government expenditures down to a percentage of its gross domestic product that is more in line with that of Western nations. Universities find themselves squeezed between these fiscal constraints and burgeoning enrollments that demand larger faculties and facilities. In response, institutions throughout the region and in Russia created a dual tuition system that admits some students tuition free under state quotas. Those who do not qualify for highly competitive tuition-free admissions pay relatively high fees. The system is, however, breaking down in Macedonia, and all students are beginning to pay at least some tuition.
The Bologna Process
In 1999, education ministers from twenty-nine countries signed the Bologna Declaration, which aims to create a European Higher Education Area by 2010. The ministers were from countries already in the European Union or aspiring to join it. They envisioned a system in which universities in member countries would offer comparable degrees with two main cycles (undergraduate and graduate). The system would also permit transfer of credits to enhance student mobility and promote European cooperation in ensuring educational quality. Subsequent meetings of the Bologna group have expanded signatory countries to include, among others, the Balkan nations and Russia.
The agenda has also expanded from its original purposes to include strategies to (a) encourage lifelong learning, (b) make the European Higher Education Area competitive with the United States, (c) bring more equality of opportunity and democratic governance processes to higher education, and (d) strengthen national economies through programmatic, curricular, and teaching reforms.
The Bologna Process has been driven by governments rather than by faculty members, and it represents an important shift in where academic reform decisions are made. Traditionally, decisions about higher education in most of the nations in the greater European area have been made by national government ministries in partnership with senior academics. The Bologna Process has shifted the locus of decision making, at least in the agenda-setting phase, to a supra-national or European level.
One challenge for Balkan countries that have enthusiastically embraced the Bologna Process is that they, like other nations aspiring to EU membership, confront circumstances different from those facing the core fifteen EU countries. Most of these aspirant nations must deal with what Polish scholar Marek Kwiek has called the dual tasks of dealing with old, pre-Bologna challenges and with the new agenda posed by the Bologna Process. The old challenges include inequitable access to universities, inadequate resources for competitive research, badly outdated teaching materials and methods, and rigid governmental controls. In addition, some academic programs have little relevance to the emerging economies of the region, and insufficient government funding for operations and facilities often inhibits the quality of teaching and research.
Autonomous Faculties
Macedonian universities, like those of most other Balkan countries, have highly autonomous faculties. Individual Macedonian faculties have separate legal status and present their budgets to the government; appropriations are made directly to the faculties. One rector told me he didn't know what some of his faculties had requested of the government. The rector or president, traditionally weak in Europe compared with the United States, is especially weak in Macedonia.
Other Balkan countries struggle with this same structural characteristic, although some have made changes to strengthen the role of rectors. Slovenia, for example, centralized substantial power under the rector. In Croatia, rectors have more limited functional responsibilities. Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Kosovo had organizational reforms imposed on them by occupying powers, while Serbia, like Macedonia, is trying to address this perceived organizational weakness identified through the Bologna Process. Legitimate historical reasons explain this decentralized structure. Under communist regimes, rectors were political appointees, and the strong position faculties held protected them from political interference. Many faculty still harbor misgivings about a stronger role for rectors, fearing that past political threats to academic freedom may return.
The decentralization of Macedonian universities, political instability, and high turnover among ministers of education have posed serious obstacles to governmental reform policies. Some faculties, such as the economics faculty at Sts. Cyril and Methodius University, have moved ahead in progressive and aggressive ways in the absence of central policy directives. But, overall, reform is uneven and has not addressed cross-faculty issues, such as the need for a more interdisciplinary curriculum and the transferability of classes between faculties. A legal reform process now under way proposes to start with the Croatian model's limited functional responsibilities for rectors and slowly move toward the stronger role for rectors seen in the Slovenian model.
Academic Traditions
The autonomy of faculties has influenced the curriculum and patterns of interaction among academic staff. Because each faculty is funded separately and directly by the government, and because budgets are based on the number of existing academic and support staff, faculties have every incentive to maintain or build their staff. Each faculty therefore offers its own language and math courses rather than sending its students to another faculty. As a result, faculties have become "silos" in which students and staff interact academically only with their counterparts in the same faculty. The rigid way in which funds are allocated and policies at the dean level discourage interdisciplinary programs.
The economic transition of the past decade has dramatically affected the lives of individual faculty members in Macedonia and the broader region, including Russia. Once part of a respected and relatively well-paid profession, academics today find themselves unable to survive economically without supplementary income. Many capable academics leave for the West, where they can more easily pursue scholarly interests and research. Among those who remain, one common form of survival is itinerancy. A professor who is anchored, for purposes of a pension and other fringe benefits, to one university may travel to teach part time at other institutions. Full-time faculty at a public university can typically discharge their teaching responsibilities in one day a week, which allows them to hold part-time positions elsewhere. Albanian-speaking academics in Macedonia, for example, may teach at Pristina University in Kosovo, South Eastern European University and Tetovo University in Macedonia, and even sometimes in Tirana University in Albania.
These faculty members teach increasingly large classes as a result of rising enrollments and a lack of government funding to accommodate additional students. Macedonian universities have a student-to-faculty ratio of about 27 to 1. In central and eastern Europe and Russia, these ratios typically range from 6 to 1 to 12 to 1.
Another way faculty survive is by tutoring students who are preparing for entrance exams. In the absence of national standardized exams in Balkan countries, faculty have found a lucrative role in preparing students to take individual university entrance exams. Some allege that this practice, along with test preparation for individual courses, manifests the corruption that permeates society and poses perhaps the most serious threat to fundamental reform.
Research funding, always scarce in poor countries, is now even more difficult to secure in Macedonia. Because of the nation's struggling economy and limits on public spending, the government has little money to allocate to research. Countries with well-established research records and better-equipped university research centers attract the contracts of multinational firms, which have many choices regarding where to invest their internal research funds. Donor agencies such as the Open Society and Tempus foundations typically prefer to invest in reform processes and curricular innovations rather than in research. But those faculty who succeed in securing funding from international foundations do well, because such foundations' contracts pay international wages, which are lucrative for Macedonian and Balkan academics.
In the realm of instruction, the Bologna Process is pressing faculty to change their teaching methods and course content. Most Macedonian faculty are products of one university and have been socialized in traditional didactic teaching methods. Bologna reforms are attempting to change the tradition of long classroom lecture hours with virtually no classroom interaction. Although some funds for training in newer teaching methods are available through donor agencies and the EU, lack of faculty interest and time constraints are serious obstacles to widespread participation. Introducing new course materials, such as up-to-date readings and computers, is a challenge in small countries where economies of scale militate against the availability of materials in the native language. How many textbook publishers are willing to print a Macedonian version of an introduction to economics?
The two most important cumulative effects of managing multiple jobs are that faculty have little time for informal interaction with students, and research and scholarly activities suffer. Students I met with described faculty members as inaccessible. Deans and faculty members I interviewed cited lack of modern equipment and time for research as obstacles to their ability to move into the mainstream of European universities.
Difficult Details
The government of Macedonia has strongly endorsed the Bologna Process. The country's Ministry of Education and Science has made it the centerpiece of its reform efforts. And faculties and universities have begun to adopt some of the easier Bologna reforms, like the European Credit and Transfer System, which is scheduled for full implementation some time in 2004.
Still, although most parties concerned support the Bologna Process, difficulties have arisen over the meaning of particular reforms, the depth at which they are undertaken, and the priority given to them. For example, on one level, the European Credit and Transfer System is an easy but relatively superficial change. A faculty could, for example, almost arbitrarily assign credit values to the existing curriculum. The only real transfer issue to be resolved by the system is the credit value of classes taken by European students who come to Macedonia or by Macedonian students attending EU universities.
The more difficult credit-and-transfer task ahead is internal to Macedonian universities. It involves creating more elective courses and transferring credits between faculties. Having students take a significant number of elective courses outside their faculties will fundamentally change allocation of the funds supporting faculties, job security, and traditional values regarding the nature of the curriculum. The changes in teaching styles and methods the Bologna package calls for also strike at the core of faculty traditions and culture.
The scores of faculty members and administrators I interviewed voiced strong resistance to any reforms until the dire financial circumstances of the universities are addressed. Academics were willing to talk about the Bologna Process, but financial concerns—salary levels and funding for enrollment increases, facilities, and equipment-dominated our discussions.
Yet on another level, Macedonian academics are eager to join their colleagues in the European mainstream. Most of those I interviewed said the recognition and the prestige associated with the Bologna Process were important to them and were the reason for their willingness to engage in reformdiscussions.
Government officials beyond the Ministry of Education and Science also want to see their country move into this European space. For them, it is a step in the direction of joining the European Union. Because many leaders in these ministries come from academia, they understand the inner workings of universities and know that significant changes must occur if Macedonia is to compete in Europe's academic mainstream.
Reformers in the government, the academy, and Mace-donian officialdom are using Bologna to push for structural reform, particularly the reduction of faculty autonomy. They argue that Macedonian higher education needs structural change to formulate and implement the kinds of academic policy changes Bologna requires. These reformers cite changes already made in other Balkan countries such as Slovenia and Croatia.
Reformers interested in greater access to higher education for underrepresented ethnic communities, particularly Albanians, cite the emphasis the Bologna Process places on diversity and democracy in university reform. But most university leaders do not see equity and democratic governance as central to Bologna or as a high priority for Macedonia.
One important reform now under consideration is changing the way in which government funds flow to universities. Reformers have suggested moving away from the traditional model that allocates funds based on the number of existing staff to a more formulaic or normative model based on enrollment demand and the fields of study needed for the economic development of Macedonia.
Whether Macedonia's participation in the Bologna Process will result in substantive reform in the operation of universities is an open question. Top-down, government-led reform often ignores local realities, such as faculty incentives and values. Some faculty may acquiesce in or even advocate superficial changes to obtain EU recognition but strongly resist reforms that might clash with their fundamental values, destabilize their power base, or erode their ability to earn added income.
Moreover, reform strategies cannot afford to embrace changes in one area—teaching—but ignore the effects of those changes on another area—research. If Macedonia is to compete in what the World Bank calls "constructing knowledge societies," some attention must be given to assessing where and how Macedonia might develop its capacities to create knowledge.
Structural changes, both organizational and financial, may be within political reach in the near term and could havefar-reaching consequences. Reducing the autonomy of individual faculties and strengthening the role of the rector and university-wide administrative bodies could lead to a more unified vision of the direction universities should take. Likewise, change in how government funds flow to the universities could significantly modify the current incentive system. If the Bologna Process can increase the probability of such reforms being adopted, then it will play an important role beyond mere rhetoric. The danger may lie, however, in the lure of the rhetoric, the rush to adopt reforms, and an unwillingness to pause long enough to examine carefullythe unintended consequences of reform on the everyday operation of faculties.
Anthony Morgan is professor of educational leadership and policy and former vice president for budget and planning at the University of Utah. He has consulted widely in Russia, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans for the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and other international organizations.
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