Long and Hard Fall of Higher Education

Jagoda Radojcic

Recently published Shangai list of the world's best universities has again turned the attention of the public to rank-list of colleges which has very accurately and promptly recorded objective of improving and declining higher education institutions in the world. The criteria are very clear and measurable - number of graduated students and professors winner of Nobel prizes or Fields medals, the number of researchers whose scientific articles are regularly quoted in other scientific publications, the number of most esteemed published in scientific journals such as Nature and Science, the number of articles that are indexed in the most important scientific bases and academic success in relation to the number of permanently employed teachers.

Among the top 100 world universities, 37 are from the United States, 17 from the UK, 7 from Australia, 5 from Canada, 4 from the Netherlands and Japan, 3 from Switzerland, Hong Kong and Germany, 2 from Denmark, Korea, France, Singapore and Sweden, and 1 from Finland, Ireland, Israel and New Zealand. Top-10 American universities are Harvard University, which is already the second best year, and Yale University, which is already the second year in a row on the second place. Followed by the British Cambridge and Oxford University, is the fifth California Institute of Technology, that was last year on the 7th place, the sixth Imperial College London who has in relation to the previous year fell by one place (he was fifth), the seventh University College London (last year was the ninth), the eighth is the University of Chicago who was compared to the previous year dropped to one place (he was seventh), the ninth Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which last year was the tenth, while the tenth place Columbia University who last year was the 11th place.

If you take into account the population of each country in relation to the number of top universities, it is shown that, although the U.S. has the highest among the 500, one comes to every 1,900,000 Americans, in Sweden with 11 universities among the 500 best one comes to every 822 thousand inhabitants. And is similar to New Zealand, Finland and Switzerland, and Norway are close and Denmark (1,160,000 and 1,370,000 inhabitants).

The only university from the area of former Yugoslavia that has reached this level, the list of 500 best is the University of Ljubljana, which took 446th place in the world. Not a single other universities from these regions is not. Ambitious students from the countries of former Yugoslavia, if You want to study at one of prestigious Universities 'in the vicinity', you'll choose from 5 Austrian, 2 Czech, 1 Hungarian, 4 Greek, 14 Italian, or 5 Turkish universities, which were found on the list of 500 best .

Although almost all the Balkan countries, except Montenegro, speaking strictly statistically, have quite enough residents for at least one prestigious university, this has still not happened. Higher education without which, all agree in principle, there is no development nor a step forward in the contemporary world, activity that was systematically suppressed in whole region for the past 20 years to another plan that would be found at the bottom of a food chain, together with textile industry, culture and the a tanners. Regions with the lowest percentage of highly educated residents in Europe won't change that sadly status for a long, long time. Namely, between the proclamations and strident promises on the one hand, and the gray reality on the other, there's enormous sink hole. The average resident in the Balkans, noted accurate statistics, there are approximately 8 and a half years of education. Oh, if only international scientific status of Balkans universities would depend on amount of national flame…. In high education there's no stagnation: you either grow or fall. Under that criterion, Balkan universities definitely fall. Long and hard.

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