The reform the government has started this week to protect the integrity of the higher education system should have happened sooner. However, now that it has started, with private university closures and suspensions, it must be done right – with no political favoritism and no backroom deals.
Tirana Times editorial
The government has used the lull between the two academics years to announce it will close or suspend thirty of the country’s private higher education institutions – about two thirds of total — following a Ministry of Education investigation that found they did not meet basic legal and quality standards.
This newspaper has expressed concern about the alarming growth of the business of higher education in Albania and poor state of private universities for years. Yet many private universities were allowed to go on to make a mockery of higher education. It seemed most Albanians were blinded by euro signs and easy “diplomas” to care about the damage being done the integrity of education system and the professional reputation of the country.
The state is at fault too for the growth of the private universities, many of which have at one time or another sold “diplomas” without students ever attending.
Outside outright fraud, those students who did attend some of these universities often received a substandard education. Many studied in areas where there is clearly no need for new graduates. “Talk to your waiter about your legal problems, he likely has a Law Degree,” the joke goes these days Tirana.
This even as foreign and Albanian managers among our readers often gripe about their inability to find properly qualified staff to fill available positions in a country where unemployment is in the double digits. For years, managers have expressed concern of discord between what Albanian universities are producing in terms of graduates and the needs of companies operating in the country.
Public institutions were at fault too, when they started requesting “master’s degrees” from experienced public workers who had to “continue their education” to keep their jobs. These requests fueled the ranks and demand for private universities.
The private university bubble was allowed to grow to more than 40 institutions, with millions of euros invested by students and their families, as well businesses looking to earn a piece of the pie in the education market. It made for a social time-bomb, as this newspaper put it back in 2011, akin to the pyramid schemes of 1997.
It now appears the current government has seen the writing in the wall and decided to act before the bubble bursts, or before “the pyramids in education collapse,” as the Prime Minister Edi Rama put it.
The reform to protect the integrity of the higher education system was overdue. But now that it has started, it must be done right. There should not be any favoritism played for political or business interests. There should be no backroom deals about who stays open and who stays closed. What is needed is an entirely impartial filtering system based solely on academic abilities. Perhaps a strict quota on licenses should be imposed to improve performance.
Albania has a small population and does not need more than a handful of universities, based on the EU per capita average. Anything more than that and both quality and accountability decline.
