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DE RUEHBW #0988/01 2451113
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
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FM AMEMBASSY BELGRADE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 0185
INFO RUEHBW/AMEMBASSY BELGRADE

UNCLAS BELGRADE 000988 
 
SIPDIS 
EUR/PPD FOR MARK SMITH 
ECA FOR CAROLYN LANTZ 
 
C O R R E C T E D  C O P Y (TEXT) 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV OEXC OIIP SR
SUBJECT: BACK TO SCHOOL: SERBIA'S HIGHER EDUCATION STRUGGLES TO 
BECOME MORE EFFECTIVE 
 
SUMMARY 
------------- 
 
¶1.  Serbia's higher education system is academically diverse and 
decentralized, with institutions varying significantly in terms of 
enrollment numbers, tuition costs, graduation rates, and overall 
adaptability.  While the reforms of the European Bologna Declaration 
facilitated greater student mobility within Europe, it remains 
difficult for students studying in the United States to get credits 
and degrees validated in Serbia, where implementation of Bologna 
reforms is spotty and at a relatively early phase.  University 
graduates in Serbia have trouble landing jobs upon graduation, but 
some Serbian universities are taking steps to better match higher 
education to workforce demands.  End Summary. 
 
THE BASICS OF SERBIAN HIGHER EDUCATION 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  Despite significant government oversight of higher education, the 
system in Serbia is decentralized in terms of academic decisions, 
allowing "faculties" significant autonomy in major decisions. 
Faculties in Serbia are similar to academic departments and colleges 
in the United States, but are considered independent legal entitles. 
Serbia has seven public universities with 82 faculties; however these 
figures include the University of Pristina in Kosovo.  Serbia has six 
accredited private universities with 44 faculties.  In addition, 
there are two public faculties and five private faculties that are 
unaffiliated with universities.  Other institutions of higher 
learning include 48 accredited post-secondary vocational 
institutions.  The latest available enrollment statistics from the 
Serbian Statistical Office's 2008 Yearbook indicate that there were a 
total of 238,710 students enrolled in higher education in Serbia 
during the 2006-2007 academic year.  Outdated statistics showed that 
only 7% of students were enrolled in private institutions.  However, 
Snezana Mijatovic, a Program Manager for the U.S.-sponsored FORECAST 
exchange program, told us that private faculties had been increasing 
in popularity in the last several years. 
 
¶3.  Students' average tuition differed considerably according to the 
faculty attended and how much financing they received from the state. 
 Dr. Sladana Benkovic, Assistant Professor at the University of 
Belgrade's Faculty of Organizational Sciences told us that each year 
the Education Ministry negotiated with each public faculty to 
determine the number of students that would receive full tuition. 
According to Elizabeth Chung, the Executive Director of the 
U.S.-supported International Academic Center, the remaining students 
pay some or all of their tuition.  The 2008 yearbook reports that 47% 
of the students' tuition was fully financed during the 2006-2007 
academic year.  Chung said that tuition at private faculties was 
generally higher than at public faculties, ranging from $2200 to 
$7200 per year. 
 
¶4.  According to the latest available statistics in Serbia's 
2004-2005 Bologna Process National Report written by the Education 
Ministry it took students an average of 7.48 years to graduate. 
Approximately 40% of students did not graduate.  Dr. Benkovic said 
that at her faculty one of the reasons for the low graduation rate 
was that students found jobs before they completed their final year 
of study and never returned to graduate. 
 
¶5.  Mijatovic said that public universities had very strong 
traditions in Serbia, but they were often criticized for their 
bureaucracy and lack of adaptability.  Private universities were 
perceived as inferior to public universities, although the perception 
had been changing in the last several years, Mijatovic claimed. 
Ana Jovancai, a teaching assistant at Megatrend University, a private 
university in Belgrade, told us that private faculties were often 
considered easier than public faculties, but this was primarily 
because private faculties were more student-oriented and provided 
students with better guidance.  Mijatovic said that private 
universities were often smaller, more adaptable, and offered newer 
fields of studies that were unavailable at public universities, such 
as management and information technology.  Because of their 
adaptability private universities were considered better at 
implementing the Bologna reforms. 
 
A ROCKY TRANSITION TO THE BOLOGNA SYSTEM 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶6.  In September 2003, Serbia signed the Bologna Declaration on 
education reform that was implemented throughout Europe.  The 
September 2005 Higher Education Law incorporated the legal mechanisms 
to implement the Bologna Declaration.  While many European countries 
spent several years preparing to implement the Bologna reforms, 
Serbia pushed reforms rapidly, with limited preparation, because 
fulfillment of the Bologna principals was a requirement for European 
Union accession, according to Mijatovic.  Consequently, professors 
 
 
BECOME MORE EFFECTIVE 
 
and administrators did not have the necessary training or 
understanding of the new measures, and implementation had produced 
mixed results.  Mijatovic estimated that only about 20% of faculties 
had successfully implemented reforms, while others had tried to fit 
the Bologna Process into the old system without making necessary 
changes.  The Bologna process was designed to make higher education 
more student-centered, Mijatovic said.  It required professors to 
integrate group projects, homework, or other interactive teaching 
methods into courses that fulfill specific expected learning 
outcomes. 
 
¶7.  The Bologna Process also facilitated student mobility.  It 
established the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), creating 
standardized credits that could more easily by transferred between 
educational institutions in Bologna system.  Ivana Vujkov, Head of 
the International Office at the University of Novi Sad, said that the 
system set standards for ECTS credits according to the number of 
hours students needed to achieve expected learning outcomes. 
Students were required to attend all lectures and to complete a 
certain number of hours of work for each course before they were 
eligible to take the exams for the course.  While determining ECTS 
credit values had worked well in some faculties, professors in a 
majority of faculties had arbitrarily set the number of ECTS credits 
for their course, which had made it difficult for students to fulfill 
the requirements, Mijatovic said.  She added that the first 
generation of students to enter faculties with the Bologna reforms in 
place graduated this spring and that it would take time to establish 
best practices and to make the reforms more effective. 
 
VALIDATING U.S. DEGREES REMAINS TEDIOUS 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶8.  The Law on Universities regulates foreign diploma validation and 
equivalence of foreign school documents, but the process is 
decentralized and individual faculties set their own rules.  Vujkov 
told us the ECTS system simplified the process for students studying 
in Europe, because in some Serbian faculties students' credits were 
automatically acknowledged, although this was still relatively rare. 
All other students, including those who studied in the United States, 
must go through a longer process to get their credits validated.  In 
many faculties students have to present syllabi of the courses they 
took abroad to individual professors at their faculty.  If the 
professor deemed the course as similar enough to the course he or she 
offered, the professor would accept the credits, Mijatovic told us. 
In other faculties, committees of professors within the faculty made 
decisions about whether to accept credits.  The process was similar 
for the accreditation of diplomas.  According to Mijatovic, students 
must find a faculty that offered their degree and get individual 
courses approved.  She went on to say that in most cases faculties 
did not fully accredit degrees, but required students to pass 
additional courses or exams to get full accreditation.  Faculties and 
individual professors varied widely in terms of their flexibility. 
 
¶9.  The FORECAST exchange program in Serbia received about 120 
applications per year for students applying to study at U.S. Colleges 
and Universities.  Increasingly students were choosing to study in 
Europe instead of the United States because getting credits and 
degrees validated was often easier, they could be closer to their 
families, and students who anticipated living in Serbia were more 
interested in building their professional networks in Europe, 
Mijatovic said. 
 
GRADUATES HAVE LONG JOB SEARCHES 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶10.  In a presentation at the 2009 Danube Rectors' Conference 
Workshop in Zadar, Croatia, Milica Bojkovic from International Office 
at the University of Novi Sad cited April 2009 statistics from the 
Serbian National Employment Service (NES) to highlight the disconnect 
between labor market demands and Serbia's higher education system. 
The NES report showed that in March 2009 that there were only 7721 
people employed for every 9403 jobs in the finance, accounting, and 
banking in Serbia.  Conversely, Serbia had too many people trained as 
telecommunications professionals, sociologists, psychologists, and 
educators.  For the education and humanities sector there were 9,996 
unemployed for every 1,393 jobs offered according to the NES report. 
Despite efforts to improve employment statistics of young graduates, 
much work remains in terms of moving universities from a supply 
oriented towards a demand oriented university system. 
 
COMMENT 
-------- 
 
¶11.  While faculties are decentralized on academic issues, there is 
significant political influence on public universities, which are 
heavily dependent upon the government for funding and patronage. 
The ad hoc nature of the Serbian education system, entrenched 
interests and the short implementation timeframe made it difficult 
for Serbian faculties to effectively institute the Bologna reforms. 
The ECTS credit system increases the mobility of Serbian students 
in Europe, and the trend of students choosing to study in Europe 
instead of the United States will only become more pronounced as 
Serbia strengthens its relationship with the EU.  In order to grow 
and meet the needs of Serbia's changing economy faculties will 
need to reform their curriculum so that students are employable 
upon graduation.  End Comment. 
 
BRUSH