Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama:
I should probably say with no reservation that this is the best-organized and comprehensive process that the Albanian government has organized in view of a reform so far. It is a reform that represents undoubtedly a bold step forward. It marks a clean break with the past and a clear dividing line between what our higher education is today – gripped by many claws and the impossibly to develop in a healthy way – and what our higher education will be tomorrow – ready to produce not only the conditions in which new generations will acquire knowledge within our system of Higher Education, but I believe also it will be able to produce a whole new generation of educated Albanians in the country.
It is a law that starts on a very simple and very clear principle that we have set on the basis of our approach to the reform from the very beginning, starting with our Renaissance program, even before receiving the confidence of the Albanian people to govern the country. This simple principle is that there cannot be a mother’s state education and a stepmother’s private education, but there must be a public education funded by the state or by privates.
We have undoubtedly believed, today we believe even more strongly, as we see the transformation in a law of this principle, that this is a principle that sets the foundation of reform, but also the foundation of higher education, the need to not compromise at the expense of quality.
In my humble view, the entire history of higher education, following the major political changes and democratic elections in Albania, has been a history of compromise at the expense of quality. We want to end this story, definitely, starting from the change of the financing scheme of Higher Education and setting the concept of performance-based funding at the base of the Higher Education funding. So, funding will not be based on what we get back as a product, but it will be based on the guarantee that we will receive a quality product. No more funding for the sake of that deformed principle that I mentioned earlier, according to which state universities are of the mother and it doesn’t matter if the money of taxpayers is squandered, while, on the other hand, universities funded by privates are of the stepmother, so it doesn’t matter if they directly affect the core of the system in order to take advantage, but it is an approach that puts competition, merit and quality at the foundation of the relationship between the state or the government and the higher education system.
Of course, the state cannot help but be increasingly the main financier of higher education. This is an investment which society has the right to claim back as a quality product through its representatives. This is not an investment that can continue as it has continued for years, when money would be invested no matter what the received product was, and the only important thing would remain in speeches, in statistics, in reports on how generous the state is towards education, how much will there is to increase funding to education, regardless of quality.
This approach constitutes also the overthrow of the reports in view of the public, in terms of society, basing funding on indicators of the performance of universities. The system itself will push them to innovate, to improve the service provided in order to be competitive. It will push them to generate more scientific research and to aim at more international cooperation. Undoubtedly, in essence, this system will produce more quality and guarantee a systematic reduction, year after year, of the major damage that the system has caused the country and to our young people so far. It has done more harm than good. This is the truth. No matter how bitter and politically not correct it is to say, but the education system that was set up on deformations after deformations for many years has done more harm than good to our society.
The law makes quite rightly a public funding for students, ensuring that the state is close to students in need through a special fund of scholarships for all categories that, due to objective financial impossibility, cannot continue their studies. It is close to students attending programs of study that have national priority, through a special fund that guarantees that education and the system of knowledge cannot be a product based on the hidden hand of the market, but should be a product based on the awareness that without a clear organization of the system in view of national priorities and needs of society, the risk is that we end up, as signs have been very clear to date, with a great number of children who cannot take lessons because they are born and raised in difficult, remote and isolated areas. So we have agreed to pass from one generation to another while living together with a great curtailing which is based on the great injustice of treating unequally children and young people, and on the discrimination against some of them because of their inability and because the state has been blind in relation to the vital need to ensure that national priorities are addressed through the education system, and to meet at the same time all the needs for education of children and young people of this Republic, whether they were born and grow in downtown or in remote areas, where we have the tragic situation of children and youth who are completely cut off from the sources of knowledge. It is a tragic situation, ranging from 9-year schools where an infinite number of children are taught classes of exact sciences by gym or music teachers.
Thirdly, the law does obviously guarantee public funding for excellent students through third special fund, which ensures that the best are not treated like a doormat, but are given the opportunity to be even better. This way we optimize support with public funding with a focus on those who are most in need, on where society has more need, and of course on where excellence is generated.
On the other hand, the law has the virtue of significantly increasing university autonomy by delegating public universities a series of very important decision-making, ranging from the number of students, to selection criteria, the selection of students, study fees, the number of academic staff and the level of their salaries. This in fact, is the first genuine site of university autonomy, as part of a whole that puts universities in a new balance between true academic freedom, and also responsibility towards the public to provide better quality.
What has been called university autonomy so far is a farce. A farce based on a corrupt system of apparently free elections that has not produced university autonomy, but has produced unaccountability in relation to the obligations of the public towards quality. This system, which comes into effect with the new law, does in fact provide the basis of a real university autonomy, but on the other hand it ensures that the utmost anarchy and mediocrity will not take place in name of autonomy.
On the other hand, the law creates the premise for modernization of internal university governance, finally giving academic senate clear authority on academic governance of higher level institution, in addition to supporting the work on an administrative structure that serves the mission of these education institutions. Through this law we have actually two components that are complementary to having a modern governance of universities. On the one hand academic quality and on the other hand administrative quality. We cannot have academic quality if we don’t have administrative quality.
Standardization of all levels of the system, within the scope of activity of the university and approach to all actors, according to a very simple principle that does not use two measuring units for different actors, but one unit of measurement. The same unit of measurement for actors who, in our view, are all contributors to the Albanian higher education. Because, I have always believed and, seeing also what the law addresses, I am persuaded that this division has generated the systemic problem in our education, which divided the whole system into two parts, one uglier than the other. On the one hand, a mediocre public system that coexisted happily and in harmony with mediocrity in the name of autonomy, and on the other hand a private system of robbers of the dreams and savings of Albanian families. Within these two systems, healthy sources of a quality education production have been increasingly shrinking.
This law is not for those who want to get by in the endless rigmarole of all these years, where curtailed generations have followed one another. This system is for the resources generating competition and quality either in state education or in private education. I continue to think that we have made a wrong distinction by calling “public” state education, and “private” private education, and this division has produced only problems. For us, education is a public good, whether you receive it in state or private universities.
The basic change brought by this law is that in Albanian higher education there will be no more factories producing worthless degrees for their own profit. Everybody will be treated equally.
This standardization provides actually a single governing system in higher education – I mean here internal governance – it brings a set of standards for all, embodied in a code of quality; it provides a security system for quality; it brings a unified control system of legality and a system that guarantees competition.
I have been really sorry to notice that there is only one reason for resistance; it is resistance to competition. It is not resistance in the name of any principle, in the name of any alternative idea, in the name of any different and legitimate approach, but it is resistance to competition. It is the resistance of a sick part of the body that needs to be operated urgently, deeply and without compromise. We cannot accept to modify the operation and keep alive the diseased parts, because this means that we accept the ongoing degeneration of the body. We have lost so much time as a country and society, and have allowed this degradation to go on in front of our eyes and infect with any kind of germ the body of generations that have meanwhile come out from this system.
There is something else I want to make very clear. There is here a great speculation. The speculation of organized resistance against the competition. We don’t send public money to private institutions. This does not exist in law. Those who say this do merely speculate in order to confer some moral to resistance which is apparently made in the name of public interest, but essentially it does only look after the interests of the caste. The caste which has been created and keeps going on just because the system is not a system of real university autonomy, it is not a system of real university administration and is not a system that recognizes competition, merit and quality. We do not send public money to private Institutions. The opposite is true.
With this law we agree on private funding in public education. Regardless of whether the functioning of an institution depends on public stakeholders or private stakeholders, for us these two institutions are the same since they produce the same thing, education as a public good. But no public money goes to privates. Instead, privates finance public education. It should be very clear. This is a speculation! It is unfortunate that in 2015, in the name of the defense of autonomy, freedom and democracy propaganda continues against private actors in public education, like the one used to be spared by the communists. Same thing but put in other words.
We believe, and this is the question, that education is a public good. For this reason we cannot help but require the conditions for a rigorous control of all institutions of Higher Education. Self-control and control, so that nobody can feel entitled to do no matter what with the money they receive by the state. This approach is similar to Sude’s approach. Give me the money and I assure that with me you will earn more, but you cannot ask me where I take the money. Finance companies of our higher education that were closed only apparently, because in fact, finance companies of our higher education are also in our public system. Even our public system has finance companies that give diplomas of no value that nobody needs. Although they are regular in every other aspect and students’ money is not paid directly as it used to happen with the “Sudes” that were closed, but it is paid under the table.
It is time to say these things clearly, although it might sound rude. But truth is much more abrupt compared to what I can say and to what we all together can say. Truth is much more abrupt compared to what we all together can say in unison, and even if all cameras were switched off and we promised to each other that no one will learn what we say, yet truth in our system of Higher Education is much worse than what we can tell. This is fact.
Public institutions, established and funded by the state, are for us one aspect. On the other there are public institutions, initiated and funded by private actors. Thus, the possibility of transforming independent institutions of public higher education in modern, public bodies that provide public service and greater academic freedom, according to the most modern and successful international models is guaranteed.
Research is another great farce that has been going on, and we cannot allow it to continue. Firstly, we need to put it on sound foundations and then see when real scientific research will take place in Albania. It is a matter of time. As of today, it can be called anything but scientific research.
I was attending the Ministers’ meeting of the Region, and I said that I have been having a habit for a long time: once in every season I take a taxi past midnight and tell the taxi driver to drive and talk. This is the best way to understand the country where he lives. No report of the World Bank or of the OSCE can provide an overview of your country better than a taxi driver after midnight on the streets of Tirana. I haven’t met a taxi driver in years who doesn’t have a law degree. I told you the story of a taxi driver who had earned his master’s degree. They know that I do not accept to be treated with a tour, so he told me: “This is from me, because today I received my master’s degree in law”. “Where do you find the time?” I asked him. “I don’t need it” – he replied. “Every morning, I pick up the children of the owner of the University and take them to school, and once in a while I drive his wife shopping.”
This is the system we created. Imagine what kind of research can be conducted within this system, one that allows us to tell ourselves that we are funding research and this money really goes for science in Albania. Except for some small nuclei that are left in the jungle of our high education, like the Japanese soldier who didn’t know that World War II was over, the rest is lost money. It is better to build nurseries and schools, rather than leave them in this situation.
Meanwhile, modernization of scientific research in universities is established as a premise in this law. Of course, there is another aspect that should be highlighted. Firstly, regulatory role for standards and rules that guarantee the system operation. Secondly, the funder’s role and we are talking about the role of the state.
Thirdly, the role of direct service provider through the institutions of public higher education. So, these three are held by the state. Saying that the state cannot maintain the regulatory role means asking the state to not treat education as a public good, but to treat it as a commodity that is sold and bought. Privates sell it more fairly, while they sell it to the public by means of corruption. This is the truth. But both sides produce a miserable situation and lies if they are left as they have been left, without any regulatory framework, where initiatives in the public or private system are indications that education can really take place, are killed, lose motivation and lose the reason for existing, in a jungle where the bad always wins.
To conclude, I want to say a few words on the Educational Service Center that provides a summary of all government services for pupils, students, but also for the institutions and bodies of regulated institutions, for the Funding Agency of Higher Education, as a new entity funding public universities in a transparent, professional and impartial way. Budget will not be allocated without knowing where the money is going. In order to receive money for producing quality education, ability to produce quality education must be demonstrated.
Reorganization of the National Agency for Technology and Innovation in a modern agency for research and innovation, and reorganization of the Accreditation Agency by turning it into an agency of quality assurance and higher education in cooperation with the British Agency of Quality Assurance. It will be responsible not only for accreditation, but also for the evaluation of performance indicators, from which the level of funding of any institution of public higher education will depend.
We have made no invention here. This may be little, but it’s true. There is no invention in this document and no new proposals in the light of Albanian style proposals and inventions. The group that has worked on the law is a group of people with different opinions, in terms of policy, with different profiles, but that have gathered around a table of willingness to make a law of higher European standards on Higher Education. We have not gathered innovators as it used to be when they would say: “We want to build an Albanian brand tractor, so let’s roll up the sleeves and invent a tractor”. But they have done an excellent work based on the analysis of many systems, on the diagnosis of our system and on conclusions that are the harmonization of needs and goals in harmony with the best European experiences.
Those who says that we are not the EU, we are not Sweden, we are not the Great Britain, we are not Denmark, and this is very ambitious, have the right to say that, but I tell them that we are not the Republic of Kashar. We are a country that aims to become part of the EU, and we cannot raise the seedlings of education like the seedlings of marijuana in Lazarat. Our education system cannot be similar to the plantations in Lzarat.
This is the law. This is the basis, and without even the slightest doubt, we have today in our system sufficient human resources and sufficient experience, whether in the public or in the private sector, to take advantage of this law and to take forward the competition system. The others, either will follow or will die. But we cannot tolerate them pretending to be alive while ruining the next generations and pretending to provide higher education. For, it would mean backstabbing parents who have spent all their life savings in order to provide their children a real diploma.
If Albanian parents come as one of the communities to fund more on education, if a significant portion of their finances go abroad, because their children study abroad, thanks to this law, a significant part of the money that today goes abroad will stay here, in Albania within the next 10 years, because education here in Albania will be competitive and will give parents a lot more security.
Once again many thanks for the invitation, for the attention and for the opportunity you gave me to finally say what I intend to say about this process which I have followed with great attention. This process has been thoroughly conducted by experts since the very beginning. The only thing we have done is to meet with them from time to time and to ensure them to not be afraid of politics and do not act as politicians with this law. Politics has only one task, give full support to this law.
The law has been made by a group representing many streams, many parts of higher education, many experience. The law has been made from “A” to “Z”, point by point, by these men and women to whom I am very grateful, and I am convinced that they will mark this moment of their academic, scientific and civic contributions as a moment that will make them very proud in the future, because this is the cornerstone of a completely transformed education.
Thank you very much!
