THE CRISIS OF THE CULT OF THE “KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY”
“The mission of the university is to create a future in which rational thought and civilized ways of evaluation will prevail.” – A. N. Whitehead
By Ali Pajaziti
Education constitutes the backbone of every society, especially the modern one. The era in which we live is no longer agricultural, nor industrial, but one of the knowledge and information society, and in the global race of the 21st century, the winners are those societies that reach the apex of scientific achievements, that possess institutions which research and produce innovative knowledge.
Developing or transitional societies are crisis-oriented environments, both in all spheres and in education; they are inclined to experience educational-political panic attacks as well (Lissman, 2012). They aspire to become part of the cult and struggle for top researchers and excellent students, constantly drafting national agendas that promote scientific products. In countries without a long democratic tradition, for a certain period, there exists a tendency for education to become statist, to be placed under the control of ruling actors, and to be traded and commercialized. On the other hand, Ivan Illich, more than five decades ago, in his work Deschooling Society, opposed the monopolization and commodification, or the transformation of knowledge into merchandise.
The Millionaire and Half-Education
The relationship between commodified education and degradation is beautifully described by Lissman through the metaphor of a globally renowned quiz show. Programs such as “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” represent a typical manifestation of pop culture, reflecting the way education is often reduced to the level of mass media entertainment — a visible indicator of the weakening of knowledge and educational formation. Since this quiz achieved enormous success, teachers and professors, following this trend, no longer use classical question-and-answer methods to assess students’ real understanding of the subject matter. Instead, they organize forms of testing based on guessing or random choices, which express neither depth of thought nor critical reflection.
Theodor W. Adorno, in 1959 — several years before the first German “educational catastrophe” — wrote his “theory of half-education” (Theorie der Halbbildung). In his well-known essay on this subject, Adorno argues that in modern societies, education is often transformed into a commodity; culture is reduced to consumption (for example, media and the culture industry); individuals acquire “ready-made knowledge,” but not the ability to think independently and constructively. Thus, Halbbildung is a form of degeneration of Bildung (full cultural and intellectual formation). Today’s education, through multiple-choice questions, resembles a media quiz more than a tool for elevating the young person preparing for life.
“The Dinosaurs of Science” and the “Wagon Researchers”
Science is a sophisticated profession that not all people can practice. Academism is a special sphere in which only those who possess inclination and perseverance for uninterrupted work toward self-cultivation and the enlightenment of others, of generations, can swim. The annals of academic work in our country, but also beyond, alongside hyperactive individuals and staff working according to the required parameters, also record another profile — that of the self-proclaimed doyens of science, of ex cathedra lecturing, of the mammoths of research who, throughout their lives, write rarely, perhaps one book in twenty years, and launch it as the “masterpiece of the field.” They have not understood the paradigm shift: from the lecturing professor who had his own textbook, we have moved to the dynamic researcher-professor who, for the sake of academic efficiency, may lecture not only through his own articles, but also through the works of others, even books written by leading foreign authors.
The other extreme consists of a segment of the jungen Lehrern — young lecturers who, driven by the pressure for formal advancement, as a result of a road paved with “false feathers,” have not genuinely passed through the filters of academic promotion. Supported either by strong social networks, by parents, relatives, or political clans, they have made a dizzying leap within the spectrum of academism or the university world. This type of scholar, with fast-track theses and dissertations, parades immaturely through the university sphere. Such individuals publish as far as Gjirokastër and Mitrovica, perhaps Sarajevo, but no further.
We heard an interesting case from a high school principal regarding a professor who had come from the field of Baushtelle — construction work — who, after four months of self-torment, one day entered the principal’s office and confessed: “I am returning to where I belong, where I feel like a free bird!” This is an honest type who truly saw himself in the mirror. Unfortunately, such people are few. There are many academics occupying university chairs who lack the courage to find their real place and profession, thus burdening generations.
Astonishingly, part of the professoriate at certain universities can only be found through CVs containing merely data from the three educational cycles, without accompanying materials. Some have 7 or 24 citations, or are absent altogether from academic platforms such as Google Scholar and others.
Another category consists of those who “join the congratulations” in science, that is, hiding behind teamwork, they add their names to papers in which they have not inserted even a single comma. One writer is the locomotive, while the others are merely wagons of the composition, numerical decoration, and winners of academic points for promotion. Some operate according to the logic of “cite me, and I’ll cite you” — known in academic literature as citation cartels, citation networks, or strategic self-citation — a recognized form of academic misconduct used to artificially inflate citation metrics.
The New Higher Education Law 2026: “Toward Metrics and Academic Sprinting”
“With the support of over 60 professors, institutions, and affected entities, representatives of students, professionals, and experts, the Ministry of Education and Science has prepared the new legal framework for higher education and science, from which a higher-quality academic education and the stimulation of scientific-research activity in the country are expected.” This is the statement of Education and Science Minister Janevska, published on February 6, 2026, on the website of the respective ministry. Who the authors are remains unknown. Where do the responsibility and ethics of the authors remain, if they lack the courage to appear before the public with their name and surname?
This draft law caused turbulence within the academic world and beyond, as a consequence of demands that are realistically above our university’s reality. A small country like ours sets as its target ranking among the top 1000 universities, requiring 1200 papers with impact factors. According to the minister, our current figure ranges somewhere between 300 and 500. One troubling issue, not only for our reality, is the indexing of science, especially through platforms such as Web of Science (SCIE) and Scopus, which appear as a “seal of quality” and an indicator of reliability for academic journals, but which are widely criticized because they encourage the culture of “publish or perish!”, equate the prestige of the journal with the quality of the article, neglect regional research, and promote manipulation of citations.
Meanwhile, the new legal agenda also aims at the reorganization and revival of the Quality Agency, which from now on will not only perform accreditation, but also evaluation. Implicitly targeted is the reduction of certain private universities labeled as “diploma producers,” which in reality are phantom universities, with “campuses inhabited by few souls” and a handful of “professors according to need.”
The new law should also have emphasized sanctions against corrupt lecturers. We know from reality that figures caught in plagiarism and corruption, whose misconduct is openly known to the public, have not been punished at all.
Problematic, in our view, is the tendency to transform professors into “grant seekers” and “producers of scientific papers” to secure the budget of their units; the tendency to treat students as “clients” or “numbers” generating points for financing; and the fact that the university loses its character as a “temple of knowledge” and turns into a “corporation” that must be profitable to survive. The attempt to statistize the university, suppressing academic freedom and independence, reduces this supreme institution to the level of a high school. Articles 198, 199, and 201, which grant the minister the possibility to annul decisions of university bodies, are depressing for academia. According to Article 43, the National Council is the highest body in the field of higher education, where out of a total of 15 members, six are appointed by the Government, six are proposed by the Inter-University Conference, while one member comes from the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, one from the chambers of commerce, and one from among the students who are members of the Inter-University Conference. The real concern is that the state, through its members, will impose control over the university.
Through this law, a heavy blow is also delivered to young lecturers through exceptionally high criteria that surpass even those of European universities. In this regard, decision-makers concerning the entire academic sphere should bear in mind Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
In conclusion, we may say that, whatever the case, the debate over the new law has mobilized academia. The phase of the comfort zone has now ended; with this law begins a new phase — that of academic Darwinism — in which every institution and actor in higher education must recover and become part of the global competition in education and research. The state must effectively eliminate the cancerous entities that destroy education and research through open platforms of academic marketplace bargaining, the sale of seminar papers, bachelor’s theses, master’s theses, and doctoral dissertations that are transparently offered through websites and social networks. Meanwhile, the number of university courses related to ethics should increase so that both students and lecturers become more aware of the harmfulness of buying and selling scientific products. The university should not only educate, but also cultivate.
The text was developed within the project “Advocacy for Inclusive Development,” financially supported by the Government of Switzerland through the Civica Mobilitas programme.
The content of this text is the sole responsibility of the Forum for Reasonable Policies, IOHN and BIRC and in no way can be considered to reflect the views of the Government of Switzerland, Civica Mobilitas or the implementing organisations.