Prime Minister Edi Rama’s meeting with professors and heads of universities on the results of the education reform and wage increase:
Hello everyone!
I believe that this is a difficult communication because I do not think that none of you in this room has finished high school with an average of 6. On the contrary, I am convinced that if each of you in this room thought about the average grade, you would be first to say how much it has gone down throughout the years, from the day you finished high school, until today, when 6 is the ceiling average, and it is considered a blasphemy because some who have 5.1, 5.2 or 4.9 are not allowed to enter university.
I’d take a cue from what the minister said about the Albanian language and mathematics, how these two subjects had a downfall year after year, both in terms of the assessment of the condition to speak and write correctly our language, and of the assessment of the condition to have a sound sense of mathematics, as we speak here not about social assistance or economic benefits for the people in need, but for the elite of our country.
You know for sure, just like I do, I’m not telling you something new, that had you been thoroughly demanding in terms of documents drawn up by the administration, in terms of how correctly they are written in Albanian, you wouldn’t have signed them without turning them back 7 times. And you would have to wait until the next week to receive a document written in proper Albanian.
And this devastation of our language is an expression of the overall devastation, not of our education system in all these years, but of the significance of education and of the value of education as a precondition to set the value of every individual in a competition process in a society where people are assessed based on knowledge.
We’ve inherited an education system deliberately built with one lane. So, a road to the future for the entire next generation, with just one lane. From the first grade straight to university. We succeeded in breaking a world record, by having universities 18 times more than Great Britain and 15 times more than Germany, per capita. Which means, a new road was built to cut it short in the present, by distancing the future far away. In doing so, young people were told that the end of this road for all of them is the submission of the graduation thesis, while the rulers would buy some time in power, avoiding to face a problem that is much more evident if university doors are not wide open to all, the problem of youth unemployment. What they did is that they allowed unemployed people to hang around for 5 years in the university halls, once they finished high school, and then after 5 years we’ll see what we can do. But this is not all. In the meantime, the other lane which is necessary for the economic and social growth through employment, the lane of vocational education was closed.
A few vocational schools didn’t close, not because they had to provide vocational education, but because some teachers and administration staff had to be employed when elections approached. Vocational education schools where somebody was supposed to become an electrician without touching a wire or seeing a lamp, without any connection to the market or to their future.
Furthermore, another two narrow lanes were opened within this lane, one for the public university and one for the private university, thus destroying any prospect of healthy competition to increase quality, in addition to hermetically limiting any connection of the university with the market on the basis of a crippling financing scheme. A financing scheme that didn’t take into account any substantial element of autonomy for public universities, and a financing scheme that would merely tolerate private universities to be to profitable enterprise. So, two birds were killed with one stone. Both the public and private higher education were destroyed. Actually, it was not built at all.
On the other hand, a State Matura was built such that it was the beginning and the end of the effort to enter university, by completely neglecting what a student has done over the years, and by of transforming the effort to enter university in an effort to provide a copy in the State Matura exam. A State Matura that eventually destroyed every filter for university.
I won’t dwell into what we’ve tried to do because these things are known, but I’ll say only this, that this is only the beginning of a process where competition will be tougher year after year, and entering university will be tougher, not easier, so that we will make sure that those who graduate will be educated servants of this people and of this country, because the chain effect of this whole destruction that started in the first grade does not end at the moment you graduate from university, but it continues after the awarded diploma entitles you to have in your hands the fate of the people, as a civil servant, a teacher, a doctor and nurse of this country, for we reap what we sow, and this happens at the expenses of those who rightfully expect to have a state that provides quality services, to have a number of institutions that design the future and manage the present with responsibility and knowledge.
Let’s come at the present moment we are going through. To me it is similar like two drops of water with the moment when “we discovered America” when we said that energy is a commodity and as such we should all pay for it. I believe that you are all witnesses of how much controversy, debate, conflict this discovery sparked, and how many people, even educated ones, opposed this discovery saying “No” because the poor, the unemployed, etc., have the right to steal energy, they have the right not to pay for energy if they don’t have the money. The same is happening today when people say that everybody has the right to attend university, and the right to attend university is confused with merit. Of course, everybody has the right to attend university, everybody, every parent has the right to think that their child should go to university, and every child has the right to go to university. This is right, and what the state should guarantee is equal chances for all, but that’s it. This right is not mandatory if there is no merit. Today, the essence that encourages the whole discussion is an expression of the same mentality, anti-competition, anti-merit, anti-Europe, here in this country where we are allowed to speak about Europe all day long provided that we don’t act and think like Europeans because time has not come yet. I’ve been hearing this “time has not come yet” since the first day I started working for this state as minister of culture, and I keep hearing it to this day by the same people and by the same forces that have prevented time from doing the right thing for this country.
They say “high school graduates are stressed”. Tell me, who among you wasn’t stressed when you had to take the accession exam to university? Who among you wasn’t stressed before learning that you were admitted to university? And in which country of the globe is there a democratic state without competition and without stress? On the contrary, the tougher the competition, the greater the stress, the better the results.
People have a lot to say about the 10 options. Why should an excellent student block 10 options? But people forget that these 10 options are not for excellent students, but they are also for those who are not excellent, so that they can have an opportunity face to excellent students. This is a great historical upheaval in the mentality. Nobody has ever been concerned here about the “best”, for our main concern are those who fail. Nobody has been concerned in all these years about how to give the best what they are due, because they’ve been concerned about how to give those who fail what they’re not due. And I’m not talking only about students, but this applies to every area of life. Nobody has ever worried in all these years about how to allow those who are excellent enter the public administration. The concern here has always been how to overlook excellence so that those who fail, whom we need, we’ll follow us, and then who cares how the work of the administration is carried out. This brought also the great upheaval in the mentality, or to be more precise, the extension to this day of the old mentality according to which “working in the state means work, and working in the private sector means slavery”. Because, of course, working in the state guarantees you that you can retire at a young age, so that you can stay in the coffee shop all day long for your salary is ensured, whereas working in the private means struggling to have a salary, not a pension which you must earn every day.
Let’s go back to the debate and simply make a comparison. They say “the process was too long”. Actually, the process has remained the same in terms of time – you know better than me – but the difference is that it’s the same process extended in time, except that there is competition, stress and transparency that give you a headache when you see that you didn’t pass, and you have to be continue and try to win.
Suffice it that each of you makes a quality comparison between those who are today enrolled in your universities and those who were enrolled until yesterday, to see the base of the results. Of course, there are differences today, unlike it was until yesterday because it is clear to everybody, to those who were students and to those who are teachers, that those who enter university without merit will not only fail to succeed but will also prevent those who’ve entered university with merit from taking classes in a normal way, and feel different because they’re different.
Today we have a total of 20.369 students enrolled in the first year, 16.121 of whom in the public university and the remaining part, exactly 4.249 students in the private university. A lot has been said, but above all they say that we’ve done this system to favour private universities. Private universities that not only had the enrolment process opened until May, but they issued diplomas even if students didn’t attend university at all.
This used to be called democratization of the higher education. Meanwhile today, if we look at percentages, percentages of the quotas fulfilled in public universities are higher than those fulfilled in private universities. On the other hand, I have to repeat also here that there is no difference between public and private education. It shouldn’t be the case. Our reform aims at eliminating this difference created by the past, between the state-mother and the private-stepmother; that those who attend state universities are the privileged children of this Republic, and those who attend private universities are second-hand children of this Republic; that taxpaying parents, who are all equal because this system keeps standing thanks to their taxes, are divided into two categories: the parents of those who attend public universities belong to the first category, and those parents who send their children to private universities belong to the second category. This is unacceptable! And above all, this doesn’t make any sense today, as long as our reform doesn’t allow private education systems to be a profit enterprise, and we have clearly defined that education is a public service, whether you receive it in an institution funded by the state budget, or in an institution funded by private enterprises, the standards and criteria of which cannot be different form the standards and the criteria determined by state policies under the law, and transform the university system – as it happened in not a few but in 18 universities that ruined tens of thousands of students and families – into a profitable enterprise at the expense of knowledge, in addition to stealing the money of the parents and the dreams of young people.
What is happening today for the first time in all these years, is that universities funded by privates must meet the same criteria. If 6 is the limit average, it is the same limit for everybody. Nobody can pass below this limit. If the whole system for determining quotas has been defined, it is the same both for public universities and private universities, which – I repeat, we should change terminology – are public universities fund either by the state or by the private. What are the biggest American universities funded by private donations? Are they private universities? No, they’re not. They’re public universities because they have to meet 100% all standards and criteria, and they don’t aim at profit, but they aim at knowledge in view of which they organize their activity to produce an income.
In my view, the autonomy of the public university should be primarily a financial autonomy, not just to have the money allocated by the budget, administered by the university, but so that university can make its own policies to increase income, by going in the market where there are endless roads, and by transforming the whole backward process because of a completely chaotic organization in the past in terms of research – in a developed process of research through the use of internal knowledge to provide services outside the walls of the university. The process continues. The Polytechnic University is one of the universities that was in the first group of universities that have been accredited, but not like it happened until yesterday when polytechnic or mirror was the same, showcase or economics was the same, and you were given the accreditation letter by your wife’s first cousin or the wife of somebody in your party.
The accreditation is made by one of the most prestigious European agencies, the British agency for quality assurance in higher education, and our goal, which is not hidden but clear, is to toughen competition to enter university every year. Increase the quality demand every year for those who enter university, and force the market to shift towards vocational colleges, instead of shifting towards anybody who thinks that they can earn a university degree with the money generated from construction or trade, so that they can increase their income. Encourage private enterprises to invest in vocational colleges, first of all for their own benefit.
How to persuade Albanians that, first, not everybody can become a lawyer, and second, you don’t have to be a lawyer to be a person, a dignified individual in society. You’d rather be a skilled professional, a skilled craftsman in your field, instead of being a lawyer that ruins people’s lives. How to persuade people that the path to professional and family welfare of the young people in the future does not necessary cross the old path of “let’s earn a degree, and then ask the party to employ us in the government”, but it does necessarily cross and even with increased opportunities the path of vocational education, and you don’t become just a skilled person who is just employed by somebody, but you can become yourself an entrepreneur. The majority of German entrepreneurs come from vocational education, and Germany is the most developed country, with extremely developed universities but also with an extremely developed economy, the basis of which is in the vocational education.
A reform of the secondary education system is required in parallel with what we are doing. This year marks the beginning of the implementation of the reform in high school, which does not allow the government to force through its education policy a 15-year old to choose what he or she will be in the future, something unimaginable, thus being forever an hostage of that choice they made at the age of 15. For they might win the right to enter university, but this doesn’t mean they have made the right choice.
Not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of textbooks which the system has today removed, because teachers themselves were not able to understand them, let go to teach them to students.
I am convinced that what we are doing is the right thing also for another reason, because it is not an invention but it is a courageous approach built on the basis of the best European models, through a reform which was not done by the party in the government, through the minister and a close group of advisers of the party, but was done by a joint process between the Ministry of Education and University, where guarantor of the process was a committee of people selected from the academia, regardless of political beliefs.
Of course, no reform is perfect, and no reform is needless of adjustments along the way when it is implemented for the first time. Adjustments are also part of the spirit of a transformative reform.
For the sake of truth, the current process, the current system of ensuring merit in digital ways shows what works best. What the minister said is true. I have personally followed all complaints through forums, newsletters and social networks. A team of people in my office has worked and continues to work today to collect data on this issue, and put on the table the need for verification of any complaints from parents, graduates, professors, scholars or the jokers of progress which we have in abundance and who’ve been accompanying us since the early renaissance.
What I can tell you is that all appeals have been verified through the system. 99% of them have proved to be unfounded, in the sense that the system has provided information showing that those who say “I’ve got the required average grade, and my right has been denied” have not been denied any right, because there are others above them who have a higher average. We can discuss about time, not in relation to the past because there is no comparison in relation to the past, and you know this very well, and those who were here before this reform started don’t have to worry for there will be no additions from the Ministry. This is enough to understand the difference. But compared to what we claim, we can still do to reduce time, maybe by reducing the complain process since the digital system has proved to be very solid. Then, why waste time with unnecessary complaints that come only as a result of boredom or misunderstanding? But this is an issue which we should discuss together with you.
The minister knows very well your opinions and concerns because she has closely followed them, but as for me, looking at them from afar, I am really grateful to you not only for supporting this process – that’s the least I could do – but for the fact that you gave this process the required dignity.
It is normal that some of you have reservations, but the most important things is that no one has tried to prejudice the process; on the contrary, you’ve made anything possible to have the process function as it is written.
We need to do an analysis at the conclusion of the process on how to improve qualitatively the preparatory work of universities because, ultimately, autonomy, about which many speak from outside but have no idea what they are talking about, is not simply autonomy to plan financial resources but it is a decision-making autonomy, starting with the allocation of quotas, and so on, ensuring at every stage of the process a strict enforcement of law and the objectives of each university. So, it is responsibility of auto-governance in the whole spectrum, not just responsibility in terms of financial auto-governance.
And since we’re at finance, Rector Koni, made a promise during the campaign: “I’ll increase your salaries”. To tell the truth, I didn’t know how he planned to increase salaries, but I’m here to tell you that his promise will be fulfilled.
I envy him. Imagine how wonderful it would be for me, if somebody else fulfilled my promises.
There are some 20 quotes written on the walls of a study hall at Harvard. They’ve been voted by teachers and students and put there as points of reference. One of them was: “Nobody can be successful by chance. Success comes from a total self-control and will”. In my view, this is financial autonomy. No university can be successful by chance, and neither can an individual. But if we want to give university autonomy all the power that principle has, a complete self-control and an iron will are required to cope with all the pressure and resistance that comes from the inertia of the past against this autonomy. First of all this is your responsibility.
I don’t know if you know, Dhori has it, there is a report of the WB on the national budget for education. It is a report made on the base of a 2011 analysis when the national budget for education was 3.2%. The report says something that is very interesting and that is true; 3.2 is written, only 1.9 actually expended for the purpose of education. This is something to reflect very seriously. We have reflected this, and I believe that we have increased efficiency within the stipulated figure as part of the national budget for education. I believe also that this was made based on analysis, not just on the desire. However in 2013, and here you are all witnesses – Dhori won’t say that this is a political year, – the budget of the ministry of education allocated to universities was not enough to cover the salaries of teachers and supporting staff. And actually, the amount of 2013, since we face the last period of that year, covered only a 9-month period for salaries, while for the remaining three months actually teachers couldn’t be paid. How can we talk about increased financial autonomy, if university is given only a 9-month salary, and how can we claim the lecturers and faculty not to fall prey to temptations of all kinds coming as a result of necessity?
We did a survey with university professors on the budget since the beginning, and two were the horizontal issues of almost all professors. First, loss of faith that working at a university you can get the reward you deserve, which pushed massively teachers who deal with texts full of plagiarism, for one thing is to make scientific text for your career, and another to make textbooks to supplement salary, so plagiarism produced by university in Albania is surely another world record. Second, the financing of scientific publications was entirely voluntary.
In 2017 we will increase salaried for professors of higher education, as they’ve never been increased before, and this will apply to all levels of education, although we’re here talking about higher education. If the overall fund in the financial package to increase salaries and pensions of education employees in Albania is 18 million dollars, university only will receive 5 million dollars for salaries. If you consider the progress of your salaries throughout the years, this is a much higher increase than that of any previous year, since you’ve been in this job. There are 3.260 paid employees, and this means that a university professor will receive an addition of 139 thousand old ALL per month, while a lecture will receive an addition of 103 thousand old ALL per month. I won’t go further, but there will be an overall increase.
Meanwhile, the whole supporting part that receives a minimal wage will benefit from the highest increase by 35% to be applied to the entire horizontal category of our employees, because I think that this is necessary not only because you or many other people need a higher salary, but also because of another fact: you are guarantors of an historic reform in education, as are guarantors of our reforms all those who work for this country and who, unfortunately, are victims of a daily slander, based also and encouraged by a totally unacceptable behaviour of some state employees. But the vast majority of those who serve today as people of this country, whether in universities or in all the other sectors, are the marrow of this country in view of development, and are people who live with their honest work. I’d like to go back to autonomy which I think we lost a long time ago for 1001 reasons that cannot be discussed today. Some of these reasons are pretty clear to you who keep surviving in the Albanian university that is based on the state alimony. Meanwhile, our country needs knowledge in view of all sources of growth first of all, and I’ll give you an example. We developed the years of the transition, and this growth was based mainly on construction and immigrants’ remittances. Both those were the main sources of economic growth in Albania. An unsustainable growth in time, and above all a growth without real employment. Both these sources of growth have been exhausted.
We cannot have from construction or the immigrant’s remittances the same figures that used to guarantee the fundamental contribution to our overall production growth. We’ve said this sine the first day. Meanwhile, one of our sustainable growth sources is agriculture. Now tell, me how can this big truth coincide with every other effort in this direction, with the agricultural university being caught in the pincer grip of the Barbary of this unsustainable development?
I have had the opportunity to visit the University of Agriculture, and I was shocked by the destruction of that centre of excellence that should have been today the main point of reference of our government for all development policies in this sector, and should have been the first point of reference of all entrepreneurs in agriculture, and of all those who seek advice on agricultural production.
When I saw seen some sheep there who survived the carnage of the battle between man and sheep, where man took territories from sheep for illegal construction and unauthorized enclosures that transformed one of the branches of the experimental centre of the former and of today’s agricultural institute in a farce, I wondered what proof do we need more to see what we have done to agriculture in over 20 years?
Without going any further, being convinced that the Agricultural University is the most natural ally, and no donor, no foreign consultancy, no group of experts can compete with it, although they come here with the money of other people to help us, do some reports and then leave, and have no connection to reality. Where we would be today, had all that money been shared with university? Why should we address to others before we use our intellectual and scientific resources and our infrastructure?
The same can be said about natural resources. None of us who are alive today did find out that Albania is rich like no other country in the region, and one of the richest in Europe, in terms of water.
But what role did the whole mind of university have in the whole process of exploitation and management of water resources in Albania? Zero! On the contrary, our teachers have worked as an apprentice for groups of experts funded by many kinds of very honourable organizations, while the university could have been and can be the first point of reference.
We’ve done public works for 25 years. What role did university have in the supervision of public works? Zero! From the project up to its implementation. And supervisors happen to be sometimes also external lecturers who become supervisors not to thoroughly supervise the project, but to share some money with the firms.
Today, oil companies either have professors from the old days of Dhori and Mynyr, taken from Canada, or foreign ones. What role does the university have in this process? Zero! Energy? Minerals? Zero! And this is not the fault of the university. This is how university has completely shifted from its goals in all these years, and has become merely an institution of indulgences, namely diplomas based not on knowledge and merit, but on demography.
Autonomy and this moment of the reform should be seen by you in relation to the market, and in the first place it should be seen as a possibility for you to be the first providers nearby the state.
How many human resources do the new local units have to make their fiscal policy? I’m telling you, just move a little away from Tirana and some several main centres, and you will find none. So why not be university the consultant of the municipalities and be paid by the municipalities? Despite all this income, I mean as resources, not as quantity, university receives money for research that under our conditions is related to the needs of the country. In the meantime, it has a direct impact on cooperation, so that students of economics, geology, agriculture, and so on, will not be dim-witted about institutions when they graduate and compete to become part of the civil service, but will have some experience in terms of institutions. We’ve become the country where the easiest thing was to become a police officer and a gym teacher, because for no connection to the police or physical education was required. I saw Ela Tase, and I remembered that in these 20 years of transition we increased many times the average weight of the Albanian people, I don’t know how many times the cholesterol has been increased, because physical education was not included in any school activity. While today, there is no chance that people in Europe can discussion opportunities for sustainable development without including physical education, but that’s another topic.
So, dear friends and foes who are here, I want to say that I feel extremely confident, and I say this out and loud, about what can we do together to deepen this reform. And also about what we can do together by supporting each other.
We by supporting you for all your needs which you cannot meet without our support, and you by supporting us with knowledge. Countries do not differ from what they have, but from what they know. You can have everything, just like Albania, and be the outcast of the litter, or have nothing, like Israel, and be on the top list of developed countries because it is knowledge that make the difference, and if you add more knowledge to what you already have, you will have for sure an increased advantage. That’s how I see reform in education, that’s how I see cooperation between us. This is how I see also the power of autonomy and interaction among university, the government, the market and citizens.
Many thanks!
