Eastern European Reforms

NUMBER 52, SUMMER 2008

Education Reform in Montenegro: Public and Private Tensions

Joseph Stetar and Vucina Zoric
Joseph Stetar is a professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. Address: Seton Hall University, Jubilee Hall, South Orange, NJ 07079, USA. E-mail: stetarjo@shu.edu. Vucina Zoric is assistant professor at the University of Montenegro and in spring 2007 was a visiting scholar at Seton Hall University. E-mail: vucina@cg.ac.yu.

Montenegro, one of the six republics of the former Yugoslavia and one of the newest members of the United Nations (2006), is witnessing a transformation and restructuring of higher education. A small state with a population of approximately 650,000, Montenegro is unable to support complex and multiple systems of higher education. Currently there is one state institution, the University of Montenegro, which was established in 1974 and enrolls 14,000 students across 19 faculties. There are also two private institutions: the University of Mediterranean, established in 2005 and enrolling 1,000 students in six faculties; and Univerzitates, established in 2007 with 222 students in two faculties. In 2007 these two private universities enrolled nearly 14 percent of all first-year students in Montenegro.

While growth of private higher education has surged throughout much of the world in recent years, its emergence in western European countries, which are the core of the European Union, has been much more tempered. Having exhibited a strong interest in becoming a member of the European Union, higher education in Montenegro has tended to mimic the western European models where private universities enroll only a small percentage of university students. However, still geographically and culturally tied to central and southeastern Europe, which has experienced significant growth of private universities over the last 15 years, Montenegro has been influenced by that region's surge of private universities.

Unlike many of the former Soviet republics, where the state is either unwilling or unable to fund public education adequately, Montenegro provides, relative to its GDP, a generous level of support. For example, 19.1 percent of the state budget and 5.7 percent of the GDP are spent on education. While the proportion of state funds directed to higher education is not readily available, estimates suggest the amount to be substantial. However, Montenegro is a relatively poor country, and there is scarce support for any efforts to direct public monies to stimulate or support a private higher education sector.

State Policy
While the government seeks to maintain substantial control over the entire higher education system, current laws regarding higher education are directed primarily at the state university with little direct attention to private higher education. It is legally possible to open private preschool and adult education institutions as nongovernment organizations (NGOs). Classification as an NGO provides a degree of insulation from state control as well as conferring the important tax-free status. However, these provisions do not apply to private universities where the legal environment is largely undefined, making it difficult to expect much further expansion of that sector until the legal void is addressed. Financing, quality assurance, and competition with the state university for qualified faculty are the main source of tension between the state university, the Ministry of Education, and private universities.

The state protects the University of Montenegro and constrains private higher education development by prohibiting the privates from offering programs of study already existing at the state university. This constraint has led students, unable to gain access to their desired program of study at either the state or one of Montenegro's two private universities, to go abroad. Each year more than 25 percent of Montenegro's university-age students study at state and private universities in neighboring countries (mostly Serbia).

Prognosis
Montenegro's nascent private sector appears to suffer from many of the same perceptions and characterizations faced by counterparts in neighboring countries. Education primacy rests with the state university, with privates generally perceived to be an inferior subsystem with less recognizable diplomas, attracting less-qualified students, and more concerned with finance than quality. Conversely, the state university with its traditions, relatively strong reputation, and elite philosophy of education is often characterized as inert, bureaucratic, overly centralized, and unresponsive to rapidly changing market needs. However, despite the onerous Ministry of Education restraints, the private sector has been able to identify and respond to market niches.

Religious as well as related cultural and ethnic impulses, which have spawned private universities in other parts of eastern Europe (e.g., Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and Solomon University in Kiev), have found little traction in Montenegro. As a new secular state with a history of religious conflict, there is a strong, underlying social consciousness and fear that private, faith-based universities might fuel historic tensions and that factors such as quality, market, and reputation, not religion, should be the impetus for private higher education development.

Higher education in Montenegro faces many challenges. Only a small number of students are engaged in doctoral-level studies, and the exodus to Serbia and other countries for higher education has the potential to create a considerable brain drain. International exchanges and linkages are limited and in need of considerable expansion. Competition for academic staff between the state and private universities tends to discourage cooperation. At a time when Montenegro, with its very limited resources, should be encouraging the development of a higher education system to meet changing national needs, it appears to be engulfed in a culture of regulation and protectionism that throttles private initiative.

[Online] Available: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/soe/cihe/newsletter/Number52/p13_Stetar_Zoric.htm