“Reform” – a term that, on paper, sounds like a promise of improvement, but in reality often becomes the strongest test of a state’s seriousness toward an issue, an initiative, a law, or an entire system. This is precisely where the debate over the proposed new Higher Education Law begins, a draft that is currently generating considerable public attention.
By: Enis SHAQIRI
The government has approved the final version of the Higher Education Law, and it is now expected to go before parliament for review. In official statements, government representatives, as well as the Minister of Education and Science, Vesna Janevska, say the new law aims to “improve quality, transparency, performance-based funding, and expand opportunities for students and professors.” On the other hand, part of the academic community, student organizations, and the non-governmental sector argue that it threatens “university autonomy, sets insufficient criteria for scientific advancement, discriminates against Albanian-language universities, and opens the door to political interference in the education system.” Still, to understand where the real problem lies, it is necessary to examine the most disputed points of this draft law one by one.
University autonomy and the problem of transparency
The first issue concerns university autonomy and the transparency of the process. A law that preaches accountability but does not clearly reveal its authors puts itself in a difficult position from the outset. This is further confirmed by the minister’s statement that she cannot disclose the drafters of the bill “if there is no guarantee that they will not be sued.” This statement should be read not as an explanation, but as a symptom of a closed decision-making process. And that is exactly where the suspicion begins: how can one ask for trust in a reform when the process of drafting it remains unclear? A law that speaks of transparency and accountability, yet leaves its authors in the fog, at least publicly, immediately loses its most important component – credibility.
Academic criteria and standards that exist only on paper
The second issue concerns the criteria for academic advancement and the idea of “quality” that the law claims to establish.
In principle, everyone agrees that raising scientific standards is necessary, and no one disputes the need for universities to produce more research, publications, and academic competition. But the problem raised here, according to part of the academic community, is far more practical. They point out that the standards are being raised on paper, while the conditions needed to meet them remain almost the same. Scientific research is not produced by legal articles alone; it requires functioning laboratories, access to international databases, funding for projects, time for research, and a system that genuinely supports academic work. When these are missing, or at least not functional, every new criterion for publications, scientific indexes, or professional advancement risks being seen as an additional burden rather than an incentive for quality. For this reason, the draft’s requirements for WoS publications before defending a master’s thesis, as well as the stricter standards for doctoral studies, were seen as overly harsh and disconnected from reality. The fact that some of them were later softened or withdrawn shows that public pressure was not unreasonable; on the contrary, it exposed the fact that the initial draft had serious problems in terms of implementability.
In this context, when it comes to funding for research and science, we must acknowledge and emphasize that a law that speaks of quality, competition, and performance cannot be taken seriously if it does not answer one very simple question: how are funds distributed, and on what criteria?
If we look at the period from 2021 to 2023, and even earlier, the picture becomes even clearer and much harder to ignore. During those years, the two public universities in Albanian language – the University of Tetovo and the University “Mother Teresa” – did not receive a single fund for science. Zero. The same was true in 2025, when it became clear that out of 40 funded research projects, 29 were allocated to Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, while only three went to the Albanian-language universities. And this is where the biggest contradiction emerges. The state demands higher scientific results, but does not create equal conditions for producing them. In essence, the new funding model under the draft law links part of the budget to performance, turning financing into a mechanism that, according to critics, favors larger and more established universities. The problem is not only the logic of performance, but the fact that it does not begin from equal conditions. A system that gives more to those who already have more, and less to those who have historically been underfunded, is not correcting inequality – it is institutionalizing it. And then it calls that “reform.”
What does the student gain?
Students are presented as the main beneficiaries of the reform, but they are rarely treated as its real subject. What does a student gain from a system that raises standards but does not guarantee better study conditions, functioning laboratories, higher-quality programs, and more opportunities for mobility? Without these elements, the reform risks becoming a new burden for students rather than support for them.
The new structure of the public universities council has also sparked debate. Critics are calling for more student representation, since the student body is reportedly given only one representative out of 11 members, which students say amounts to just 9 percent influence in decision-making. They argue that such a body cannot function as a narrow mechanism of control, but should reflect the broader public interest. If its composition is not balanced, then the law risks becoming an instrument of institutional influence rather than an independent oversight mechanism.
The missing link with the labor market
Another dimension missing from the debate is the relationship between higher education and the labor market. A good law is not measured only by how many publications it requires, but also by how closely it brings the university to the real needs of society and the economy. If programs produce diplomas but not the skills that are actually needed, higher education remains detached from reality.
Reform or selection?
In the end, the question is not whether reform is needed. Of course it is. The question is what kind of reform is being built. Is a fairer, more open, and more functional system being created, or simply a harsher version of the same old centralization? A state that demands higher results but does not create equal conditions to achieve them does not produce reform. It produces selection. And that is where true reform is separated from institutional propaganda.
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.