Commencement speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama to graduates of University of New York Tirana:

It was by chance that somebody asked me a few days ago whether I would like or not to make a fresh start of my life, and where I would start from. I said that I would start from the next day of my final exam. If I was asked again, I would say the day after the graduation ceremony. This for two reasons: I would not want to take exams anymore, and I would not want to be in a graduation ceremony and being told what to do, what awaits me, what to think and how to act.

However, it is inevitable for me to say a few words. As soon as you understand that you would not be here if those people (the parents) were not there, the better it will be for you and the easier it will be for you the day you when you are there and ask those who you will bring here, to remember that without you there, they will not be here.

Thanking you for the honor of attending this ceremony, and totally avoiding the pedagogy associated with your tomorrow, I would like to say a few words in respect to this university and all those universities, faculties and educational bodies that in these difficult years have been able to invest in higher education, without making the opportunity to be part of the Higher Education System an opportunity to rob parents, their dreams and their children dreams, by turning universities simply and only into factories producing worthless degrees.

It wasn’t quite by chance that I used the word investment, because there is a big difference between societies that are invested for higher education and societies that simply invest in higher education. My conviction is that the goal is not only related to money that we invest in higher education. Money is obviously necessary but it is not sufficient, if we all together as a society do not invest ourselves in higher education.

I am very proud that the parliament of Albania will approve in the coming days a new law on Higher Education, which primarily is excellent news for the parents of this country who invested with heart and soul in order to give their children the possibility to attend a higher education, and receive in return the exceptional satisfaction of seeing the aspirations of their children fulfilled.

The first article of our new law on Higher Education says that Higher Education is a public good and responsibility. Therefore, I believe that this is the place to say a few words on the definition of the concept of public good. Textbooks on economy tell us that for a pure public good to be called as such, two conditions must be met: non-excludability and non-rivalry. Higher education does not exactly meet these two conditions, because when we engage resources to educate a young girl or a young guy, we reduce resources for others, so there is rivalry. Secondly, some benefit and others do not benefit from higher education, so there is excludability.

Then, why are we so convinced in calling higher education, as many other advanced countries do, a public good? Of course, there is an answer for this. Knowledge is a public good. When we consume knowledge, we do not waste it for others, instead, we add it also for others. Second, we cannot exclude anyone from the benefit of knowledge. Higher education is the way of knowledge and as such, and only as such it can be considered a public good. While, when it produces only diplomas, it is just a private good and when corruption makes money for teachers, it is a public evil.

The new law on Higher Education pivots on the will to not compromise with knowledge and with the quality of higher education. The challenge that this radical reform of Higher Education takes upon is to mobilize all the resources of society at the service of this mission for development. Firstly, we need to optimize public finances in front of Albanian taxpayers, higher educated or not, young or older, people who can benefit or not from university. This is money put aside for the university every year.

Well, we are convinced that it is time to not let any penny of that money go to waste, and most importantly, have this money invested in a way to have back the maximum possible value. And the reform does this in two ways. Funding for public universities, namely, the money the state gives to university will be provided based on performance indicators. This means that universities who attract the best students, prepare the best students, have the highest level of employment of their graduates and who participate more in international projects, will get more support from public funds. We believe that this will push universities to have direct interest to be of good quality, to have quality staff, to prepare students with quality and not merely to give them passing grades. This is a proven mechanism; it is not an Albanian invention. It has an inner and self-regulatory strength much more effective than any control from above, which we have seen fail in all these years.

The second way to finance optimization is related to direct support for students. The law makes public funding to students fairer, ensuring that three student categories have state funding this public good. First, students in need, for whom a special scholarship fund is created and whose talent, will and skills do not go to waste due to financial difficulties.

Second, students who attend programs of study of national priority will also have a special fund.

Third, students with excellent results. When I say students, and this is the fundamental innovation of the law, I do not talk about student of state universities, but about students of state universities or of universities like yours which is the result of a private initiative. We believe that the division into mother state universities and stepmother private universities has been one of the fundamental reasons that led to complete failure of the system and to the systematic looting of the parents, both of the parents taking their children to state universities and to those parents taking their children to private universities.

At the same time, the law increases significantly university autonomy, by delegating to universities, which for us are all considered public under this Law, whether it is state or private initiatives at their foundation, a series of important decision-making powers on the number of students admitted, on student selection criteria, study fees, the number of academic staff and their salary level.

This is an authentic site of university autonomy as part of this new plan, based on our belief that in the balance between proper freedom and accountability to the public, universities can create and provide the best quality.

Another challenge in order to make the coordination of society resources is related to the optimization of human resource of the entire body of professors and academic staff. These human resources are misused in the existing structure of universities. What is often called academic freedom is a pure disfigurement of freedom in order to maintain a job, in order to guarantee an unlimited vegetation and irresponsibility as long as full conformity with the dean, rector or the owner is guaranteed.

Much is talked about academic freedom in this country. We believe that our universities have anything but academic freedom. For, whether under dictate of a rector or the yoke of an owner, the space of real academic freedom is extremely narrow.

There is no academic freedom in our universities that brings sustainable progress and increase in knowledge capacity.

The new law creates the premise for this freedom, through mechanisms of modernization of university internal governance, by giving the academic senate very clear authority on academic governance of universities and by supporting their work with a managerial structure at the service of the mission. So, we increase academic freedom by having academics focused on academic tasks, without the yoke of money, appointments and tenders, and in the meantime we increase management quality by supporting academics with professional administrators.

Reform mobilizes every institutional social resources at the service of education as a public good.

And I want to make it very clear.

All those who ring the alarm that the state is taking public money to private institutions, either do not understand the law, or do not want to understand the law, or above all are unable to understand the law because they are hostage of a sterilizing ideology of the function and mission of higher education. We do not take money to private institutions. Instead, we push forward through the law towards an increase of public and private funding for public education. For us, even your university provides public education.

Reform promotes an increased number of public providers of higher education. As we have said, since education is a public good that requires the contribution of everybody without distinction, and it is supposed to be produced by both those who are in the state and those who are in the private sector, we hope that by this law we create the opportunity for nonprofit institutions of higher education to become public providers of higher education.

So, hereafter there will be no more private universities being there for profit, but there will be public universities funded by the state or by private actors such as your university, being there as public providers of higher education, which means coordinating public institutions established and funded exclusively by the state with public institutions established and funded by private actors.

The history of the mother university and the stepmother university is over. All those who have access to the higher education system thanks to their talent, will and skills, whether they enter the door of a building that is funded exclusively by the state or the door of a building that is funded by private actors, are all children of the mother, and none of them is child of the stepmother. Of course, this does directly guarantee greater freedom.

By thanking you, I just want to say that the day you take on this new role for our society, you will have this thought in your head that what you’ve earned in school over the years is a public good, if you use it as knowledge. And it will be you, your family and the whole society to benefit from this knowledge. Otherwise, if a diploma is used as a piece of paper for keeping a job and vegetate, then the investment of the entire society becomes just a small private good, and goes basically to waste.

I am convinced that I ran out of time, as I am convinced that today you deserve words and speeches more fantastic than those you have been listening to so far, so I am giving you a very friendly advice. When you return home this evening, read or reread Steve Jobs’ commencement speech to students of the Stanford University, and always “Stay hungry. Stay foolish”.