Speech of Prime Minister Edi Rama at the graduation ceremony of the Mediterranean University students:
Hello everyone!
The truth is that when I was told that this ceremony would take place in the Palace of Sports, I thought that maybe the Protocol staff was mistaken, but when I came here I realized that the community of this University had gathered together many parents and family members, and therefore the Palace of Sports was necessary. I apologize to the students, but I want to start by welcoming parents!
With their permission, I would like to take advantage of this massive presence of parents to highlight a fact that is one of the most important facts of our education reform. The fact that the parents of this country have the same right to give their children the best opportunity, whether they choose to attend a state university or a private university.
Until yesterday there was an unacceptable separation, in my view, between the mother-state universities and the private-stepfather. A separation that has brought a very large deformation and has repercussions which parents and students that opted for the universities we were forced to close down will learn the hard way.
Meanwhile, our vision and our belief have been that universities in this country are one, they are all public universities funded by the state or private entities, and actually the ultimate separation of private universities from those having purely profit goals has marked one of the most important steps of our education reform. Privately funded universities are equally valid, equally important and equally respected as state-funded universities.
More importantly, both state-funded universities and privately funded universities today are not any more for profit enterprises that produce degrees depending on the ability to pay, but they are higher education institutions that provide a public service. For this, I am grateful to all those who had the courage, the determination, but above all, the vision to invest in the private higher education, and to give education year after year a quality that is competitive, but also a big push to improve state universities.
Therefore, I gratefully salute my friend, the President of the university, who began this adventure long ago, and today he is the main contributor to this initiative that has given this country a dignified university such as your university.
Thank you dear Anastas, for this contribution!
Hello also to all the other attendees! I want to say a few words about the current situation.
We are now at a historic moment for Higher Education, since a radical reform is being implemented, one that will eventually separates the past from the future. Of course, it is a profound reform, the implementation of which is not easy and the results of which will be seen over the years. But two things can be said with the greatest confidence today, based neither on the premises nor the aspirations, but on the fact that today registration enrolment at university is being made according to an order, and this order is determined by merit, the best come first followed by all the others, without any impediment, hindrance, without being abused or excluded by any other power, be it a friend, family, the party or money, and neither by the blind fate of others. In a process where everyone can have the place they deserve, but even more important, where nobody can take the other’s place using forces that are outside their own merit.
This reform puts the fate of everyone in their own hands, since they start school and later high school, every student has their own fate in their own hands and can decide only based on the results they achieve.
This is a reform and a process that does not simply determine a new quality for Higher Education, but sets a historic turning point for high school itself. You are all witnesses to the fact of how the high school system was destroyed and how students were forced at a young age to make an imposed choice for their lives, without being able yet to make a proper assessment of that what they wanted to choose.
Just as you are all witnesses how State Matura destroyed any merit system and how categorical exclusion of results obtained over the years destroyed any source of motivation to be consistent in every subject and every year.
All these belong to the past.
While the system is being implemented today, it is being contested just like every innovation being implemented for the first time, but also as a result of an inertia of mentality which in fact is the greatest enemy of a country’s development through competition and merit. The mentality according to which attending university has nothing to do with merit or competition, but it is an acquired right which the state must recognize to everyone, even though they are all asleep. This cannot be the case and it will not be the case anymore.
I was talking shortly before with Professor Dhori Kule who told me what we have been saying since the first day, something that all rectors and deans of universities have said since the first day: the system guarantees competition and merit, and it does this according to an order. After the second phase of registration, – the professor told me – more than half the quotas remain available, and the red line, which is already determined how it will be lowered to include all those who didn’t win in the first and in the second round, ensures that all quotas will be met, and everyone who meets the criteria to enter university will enter university.
No one who meets the criteria will be left out. On the contrary, there has been no case, and it cannot happen in the system we have built, that someone who is better than another one will come after someone who has lower results.
Those who complain about why this process had to be extended in this form, must be told a very simple truth. The process was equally long also last year, two years ago and it has been so for many years, but it was not transparent, it was outside the graduates’ attention, outside the parents’ attention, outside the faculty’s attention. Everyone would expect results at the end of October and had no right to appeal and neither an option to repair the damage that was done. Meanwhile, what has changed in terms of time and the process, is that the process is in the hands of everybody, on their mobile phones or on their computers. Of course there is competition, and there is no competition without stress, without fever, and no merit can be affirmed without such a process.
But one thing is for sure. Once this process is over, universities will start lectures and there will be no more stories like the previous ones, when some departments had 70 people by the end of October and 140 people in late January.
In conclusion, I wish success with all my heart to all of you. I am convinced that your university has done what they had to, and so have your parents. Time has come for all of you graduating today to return to your parents in the first place, but also to the university, the investment they made for you, by proving with your success in life that it was the right investment, and you deserved it.
You are graduating from a university that has been a EURAS member with full rights since 2010, a direct contributor to the improvement of the quality of higher education and the promotion of quality through competition. It has never been a profitable enterprise delivering diplomas for money. In addition, it promotes cooperation with other universities in Europe and Asia. There are 60 universities from Europe and Asia that are related to your university, and this is a great evidence of the truth with which I started and with which I will conclude.
For us, every space providing education and guaranteeing knowledge, either funded by the state or privately, is a space where we build a better future for this country, and as such it should be supported strongly by the government and by the state, without distinction, without discrimination and without allowing that the children and the parents of this country feel as if they belong to different categories when it comes to knowledge.
We are determined in this, they can say whatever they want, we welcome every opinion and effort from everywhere, but we do not intend to change our conviction on this point. Universities are all equal, as long as they are all accredited, and as long as they are all guarantors of the investment made by parents, and also of the ambition of young people to realize their dreams. As such, we will support them equally, without discrimination, with all our strength.
Many thanks!
