Friday, February 22, 2013

How to improve your GPA in Macedonia

A new law was  passed today in Macedonia to help students improve their grade point average. Namely, if you graduated from a university long time ago with a GPA of, let's say, 7.5, and your employer requires you to have a GPA of at least 8.0, worry not! You can go back to your former professors and ask that you take a final exam to improve your grade. You can do this for a maximum of five courses. Remember, you can do this long after you have graduated and you have already received your diploma.

Why this new law? Well, apparently if you want to apply for a position of a judge or a public prosecutor, you need to attend an Academy, and you can't apply with a GPA below 8.0. Too many positions went unfilled for a long time because there weren't enough candidates fulfilling the GPA requirement, and the government felt this was the best of all possible solutions. Unfortunately, this law is not limited to those candidates. Since former graduates have nothing to lose one should expect thousands of them to start hitting the books and going back to college. Can you imagine the chaos this might cause at the universities? Is there anything of this sort possible anywhere else?

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Warning from Macedonian Academic Educators


Today I received this warning from an organization calling itself Macedonian Academic Educators (MAE). If this is legitimate I am now even more convinced that the state of higher education in Macedonia is really, really in a sorry state. Is this what academic freedom means in Macedonia?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anonimen Anonimus <hibiskus123@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 4:14 PM
Subject: Career in Macedonia
To: "mitrevski@auburn.edu" <mitrevski@auburn.edu>


Respected Professor Emeritus George Goce Mitrevski,

Your academic achievement is non longer needed in Macedonian Academic institutions.
We are writing you to inform you that your academic career in Macedonia has finished.
You have not done anything to improve the education in R. Macedonia.
Have filed to promote Macedonian education outside of our birders, even more you are working against education in Macedonia.
With your current writing in newspapers, blogs and etc...
Blog for Macedonian Higher Education http://visokoobrazovanie.blogspot.com/
And with every document that you have stored in web portal http://pelister.org/

Your e-mail address mitrevski@pelister.org have been misused for illegal purposes and will be reviewed by Macedonian authorities.

This have lead to put you on the black list for academic educators in Macedonia.
Please do not attempt to return to Macedonia, because there is a warrant for you in Macedonia.

Regards,
Macedonian Academic Educators (MAE)