A NEW LAW FOR AN OLD UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
Author: Enis Shaqiri
It is a hot day in August. It is just past 11:00 a.m., and temperatures have already climbed above 30 degrees Celsius.
At one of the country’s public universities, a group of students has just finished a second round of exams. They are waiting for their results in the faculty corridor. For some of them, a few points could determine whether they move on to the next semester or have to wait for another exam period.
The scene hardly resembles an academic institution of the 21st century. It looks more like a space worn down by time, where routine has replaced innovation.
A few minutes later, the professor calls the students in for consultations. He opens his laptop to analyse their mistakes and explain the results. But the projector does not work. Neither does the air conditioner. After several attempts, amid frustration and sweat, he gives up and returns to the traditional way of explaining things.
Meanwhile, the students who have failed the exam take out their phones.
Not to log into a modern university platform. Not to access new academic materials or digital resources.
Instead, they use their phones to photograph several pages from a study script to use as additional material for the September exam.
The same picture can be seen in some laboratories, where equipment for practical exercises is missing. Libraries lack recent publications. Lecture halls lack the tools that should make learning more practical and connected to the real world – a world that is changing rapidly under the influence of artificial intelligence and digital transformation.
And perhaps most troubling of all: some students are no longer talking only about what they will do after graduation. Many are talking about how they will leave the country as soon as they receive their degrees.
This is not an imagined scene.
It is an experience shared by a student during a conversation a few days ago with the Balkan Institute for Regional Cooperation – BIRC.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he explains how difficult it is for him and other students to navigate a system in which not only infrastructure, but even the most basic aspects of academic organisation are often lacking.
The student says there have been cases when he and his fellow students waited for hours to receive their exam results, only to eventually leave without a clear answer.
In some cases, he says, students were sent from one office to another to obtain information that should have been readily available and transparent.
“The problem is not just a missing or malfunctioning projector, or the lack of certain equipment. It is the feeling that the system was simply not designed around the student,” he explains.
At the same time, several kilometres away, in the country’s capital, Skopje, a debate is taking place over a new package of laws that promises better-quality universities, stronger scientific research, greater autonomy and European standards.
The Minister of Education and Science, Vesna Janevska, has said that the new laws on higher education, scientific research and quality assurance are interconnected and are intended to reform the system.
“The Law on Scientific and Research Activity is closely connected with the other two laws – the Law on Higher Education and the Law on Quality Assurance in Higher Education and Science. Therefore, I expect Parliament to adopt all of them simultaneously, following the submission of improved versions of the texts that will emerge from the public debate that the Government launched on Monday. The debates will also be held at all public higher education institutions, and I also hope for a substantive discussion in Parliament,” Minister Janevska said last month.
The documents contain ambitious objectives.
But the contrast is striking.
The university described in the draft laws and the university experienced by students every day seem to belong to two different realities.
One speaks of autonomy, quality, scientific research and European standards.
The other is still struggling with a lack of equipment, functional laboratories and up-to-date academic literature.
This gap is also reflected in the position of the country’s universities in international rankings. No university from North Macedonia was included in the latest “Global 2000” ranking published by the Center for World University Rankings. Even the country’s oldest and largest university, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, does not appear in the latest ranking. In 2024, it barely made the list at 1,990th place, only to drop out of the ranking altogether in 2025.
And this is where the central question emerges:
Is a new law enough to create a new university?
In North Macedonia, we have developed an institutional habit. Whenever a system fails to work, we often assume that the problem lies primarily in the law.
We change the articles. We change the procedures. We change the structures. And we declare a reform.
Yet, several years later, many of the same problems remain.
The lecture halls are the same. The laboratories are the same. The main challenges remain the same.
In a way, the history of higher education in North Macedonia gives the impression of being a history of unfinished reforms.
This is not the first time higher education has been reformed on paper.
That is why the debate over the new laws should not be reduced to the question of who is right: the Ministry or the universities.
A serious reform is not measured by the number of legal provisions it contains.
It is measured by what happens inside the lecture hall.
On paper, the new legislative package contains almost all the pillars on which modern universities are built.
The draft Law on Higher Education places university autonomy and academic freedom among its fundamental principles, guaranteeing universities the right to independently organise their studies, scientific research, academic programmes, staffing and management of financial resources.
The proposed Law on Quality Assurance introduces a new evaluation system based on European standards, including periodic accreditation, internal and external evaluation, and continuous quality monitoring.
Meanwhile, the proposed Law on Scientific and Research Activity aims to establish stronger links between science, the economy, innovation and the country’s development, with an emphasis on research infrastructure, international cooperation and the transfer of knowledge into practice.
Conceptually, these objectives are difficult to challenge.
But history has shown that good laws do not automatically create good institutions.
The problem with our system has not been only the lack of reforms.
It has been the lack of implementation.
The draft laws may improve the institutional architecture of higher education, but they cannot replace investment, institutional accountability and academic culture.
No legal provision can make a laboratory functional if it has no equipment. No law can fill a library with up-to-date literature. And no law can persuade a young person to stay in the country if the university cannot offer them a convincing reason to build their future here.
The central question is not whether the new law is better than the existing one.
The question is whether the state will be willing to implement it with the same seriousness with which it wrote it.
More money for the best?
One of the most significant changes concerns a new approach to university funding.
The draft law seeks to move the system away from traditional funding towards a model more closely linked to institutional performance.
The idea is that universities should not compete solely on the number of students they enrol, but also on the quality of teaching, research results, international cooperation and the impact they have on society.
In theory, this makes sense.
But one question remains: What exactly will count as performance?
Will it be measured by the number of scientific publications? By their impact? By graduate employment rates? By international projects? By cooperation with the private sector and the wider economy?
If the criteria are transparent and applied equally to everyone, such a system could encourage quality.
But if the criteria are unclear, performance could become an instrument of control.
This is where university autonomy comes into play.
Autonomy is not a privilege for professors.
It is not a shield against accountability.
It is a guarantee that a university does not change direction every time the government changes. It is a guarantee that scientific research is not shaped according to political interests.
But universities, too, must acknowledge a reality.
At a time when thousands of young people leave the country to study or work abroad, when scientific research remains far behind European standards, and when the economy needs better-prepared professionals, the current system clearly needs change.
Reform is necessary.
But reform does not begin on the day the law is adopted.
It begins when the professor walks into the lecture hall.
When the projector works.
When the laboratory has the necessary equipment.
When students learn from up-to-date academic literature rather than relying primarily on photocopied study scripts.
When a university wins international projects because of the quality it offers, not because someone has opened a door for it.
When scientific research is not conducted merely to satisfy administrative requirements, but to address real problems facing society.
That is when reform begins to have meaning.
Because universities are not built through legal provisions.
They are built by professors who defend academic integrity.
By students who demand more than a degree.
By a state that invests in knowledge, not merely in documents.
A law can create a new framework. It can change procedures and institutions.
But it cannot, by itself, create a better university.
That can only be done by the people who walk into those lecture halls every morning.
And until those lecture halls change, every reform will remain nothing more than a promise written on paper.
This text was developed within the project “Representation for Inclusive Development,” financially supported by the Government of Switzerland through the Civica Mobilitas program.
The content of this text is the sole responsibility of the Forum for Reasonable Policies, IOHN, and BIRC and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Government of Switzerland, Civica Mobilitas, or its implementing organizations.
