Response to article by Ferid Muhic on the law on higher education

In a recent article by Professor Ferid Muhic titled "Што не разбираат граѓаните на Македонија, а Министерството се „прави на Тошо“? published in the Magazine Forum (http://forum.com.mk/#_tools%2Farticle%2F249960%2Fview) the author focuses on two main issues: the government's manipulation of public opinion regarding the recent laws on higher education, and he also tackles the question of the relationship between the government and institutions of higher education. Here I would like to comment on the second question.

In his article Professor Muhic blames the government for not telling the truth about the relationship between the government and educational institutions, which according to him is the reason why the government's actions have garnered 80% of public support. He also states that had the government informed the public of the fact that institutions of higher education in Macedonia are independent social entities the public would have recognized the government's attempt at manipulation and the percentage of support would have been reversed. Next, he compares the autonomy of the university with the autonomy of the church, and he suggests that just as the government has no business in meddling with the autonomy of the church it also has no business in meddling with the autonomy of the university. In other words, he equates the relationship of the government with the church to that with the university.

What the relationship between a government and publicly financed institutions should be has been an issue of discussion since the establishment of the very first publicly financed institutions. The other point is that there is no such a thing as a universally accepted standard for the relationship between the two. In countries with long democratic traditions this relationship is set in a democratic process with the participation of both entities. This relationship may also change periodically to reflect changes in the society. What is unfortunate about the situation in Macedonia regarding this issue is that Macedonian professors and Macedonian institutions of higher education lack any tradition of democratic management of themselves. From my personal teaching experience in Macedonia I am totally convinced that if the government were to have a hands off policy toward universities the authoritarian form of governing would simply pass onto the Rectors and the Deans, and professors would be in no better position.

There is no question that the new laws on higher education are absurd and mostly impossible to implement. There is also no question that individual professors are personally responsible for the failure in the quality of higher education in Macedonia. If they disagree with this point, or if they think that this refers only to a few renegade professors, then they are really lying to themselves, or as Professor Muhic would say, "се прават на Тошо". I have yet to hear from the professors their own initiatives and statements like, "This is where we have failed, and this is how we plan to improve." I have yet to read initiatives for changes in the laws on higher education that are initiated by professors. In the absence of such initiatives they give a free hand to the Ministry of Education., and the Ministry responds with a knee-jerk reaction. If the professors want to have greater impact in the educational system and greater influence in the legal system first they need to empower themselves and organize themselves into a truly professional organization capable of managing their own affairs. Knowing the current mentality of the academic community in Macedonia I doubt very much such a thing could happen in the very near future.

Now to the point regarding the church-state relationship. Professor Muhic states:

Ниту еден орган, па ни Министерството за вери, не може да менува ни една буква во доктрините на религиите, како што не може ни да наметнува мерки со кои ќе ги регулира и одредува внатрешните односи, кои согласно законот, остануваат во компетенција на црквата. ... како што црквата не може да определува кои политички акти да се гласаат, а кои да се отфрлат во Парламентот.

I cant's speak about the laws on church-state relationship in Macedonia, but let me explain in short the situation in the US. Churches in the US are tax free institutions, and to keep the tax free status they may not engage in political campaigns. But there is nothing that forbids them from campaigning to pass or defeat certain laws. The church does have a social role in society, and it should not be prevented from participating in the implementation of laws that benefit society. Two prominent examples are laws on abortion and gay marriage.

Comparison between church-state and university-state relationship is not valid because the former is financed independently, while the later is financed by the government. Should the entity that is financing the university have anything to say about how the university is run? Professor Muhic further states:

како што Универзитетот не може легитимно да ја евалуира работата на Парламентот, квалитетот на работата на министерот или на службениците во ресорното министерство, така, сосема истото важи и обратно!

Two issues are raised here. Do professors have a legitimate right to evaluate the functioning of the government? Does the government have a legitimate right to evaluate the functioning of the university? Professor Muhic states that neither has the right to evaluate the other. Does that mean that I as a professor don't have the right to publish or state publicly anything that puts in negative light anyone in the government? (I once was told by a Rector of a Macedonian university that anything negative I say about he university will be considered as slander against the Ministry of Education and of the Macedonian education system and a grounds for legal action against me). I don't have the right to campaign for the removal of the Minister of Higher Education if I am critical of his policies? In a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education the Republican Party of Wisconsin is seeking, under the state's open-records law, to obtain e-mail sent by a Madison professor who has publicly criticized that state's Republican governor, a move the professor is denouncing as an assault on his academic freedom. (http://chronicle.com/article/Wisconsin-GOP-Seeks-E-Mails-of/126911/). As you can see, this is an important issue even in the US. In my opinion, as soon as you take away to right to be critical of government you can no longer call yourself a democracy.

The second question is should the government have the right to control and evaluate educational institutions. Professor Muhic states:

Законски е регулирано дека содржината на наставните програми, реформа на универзитетот, оценка и евалуирање на работата на наставниот кадар, никако не може да го врши ниту министерот, ниту Министерството за образование, туку сето тоа останува законско право и обврска исклучиво на Универзитетските органи!

The law does state that university organs are responsible for regulating the content instructional programs, reforms in the university, faculty evaluations, etc. Universities and professors need to ask themselves an important question. How effective have we been in the past twenty years in regulating programs, in reforms, in faculty evaluations, etc.? What have we done to improve the quality of higher education in Macedonia? I don't mean here to justify the government's approach. In fact, I believe the damage resulting from the new laws will be felt for many decades to come and will be almost impossible to reverse. I am only pointing to the fact that universities and professors need to bear more responsibility for allowing the state of higher education in Macedonia to reach this level.

Finally, the question is not whether or not the government should have any involvement in the running of the university, but rather where does the government's role end and that of the university begins. There can't be a hands off policy from the government because the university is financed from public funds and to some extent the public needs to make sure that its funds are not wasted. In the current situation it is unfortunate that the country has a Minister who lacks basic understanding of the role of institutions of higher education in society, professors who are still mostly entrenched in an archaic educational management system, and students who are still afraid to demand quality in their education.

Problems with textbooks at Macedonian institutions of higher education

The problem with textbooks at Macedonian institutions of higher education has been endemic for many decades, going back to pre-independence days. Until about two years ago there were only two universities in Macedonia, one in the capital Skopje and the other one in Bitola. There was not enough of a demand for textbooks written in Macedonian to justify the expense of writing textbooks for courses where the total enrollment in a course in the country might be less than 100 each year. Since Serbo-Croatian was a mandatory foreign language course for all students in Macedonia beginning in the fifth grade, it was expected that all college students were proficient in that language. It was, therefore, much more convenient for professors to assign textbooks in Serbo-Croatian, or in Bulgarian, a closely related language to Macedonian.

Another practice which was common and still continues to this day, is for professors to distribute their lecture notes to students, and students are tested based strictly on the content in these notes. Some professors publish their lecture notes either through the university's publishing service, or by an outside publisher. Students have frequently complained that they feel obligated to purchase these notes/textbooks before they are permitted to take an exam. The selling of these materials is usually left to a professor's assistant, who keeps track of the names of those who have purchased a textbook. Many students seem to favor this system because they feel that it makes it much easier for them to pass a course. They can show that they are supporting financially the professor's endeavor, and it's also much easier for them to commit to memory a few pages from lecture notes, than having to read a textbook of several hundred pages. In 1974/1975 I was a visiting student at University in Skopje and I lived in a house together with a student from the Medical Faculty and one from the Faculty of Economics. Neither of them attended classes, and they passed all of their courses by committing to memory their professors' lecture notes. Many times I had arguments with my house mates because just before an exam they kept me up all night with their loud recitations of their lecture notes.

In the last few years English has become a required foreign language for all students in primary and secondary schools. So, university professors and students now rely much more on textbooks and other literature written in English. The problem now is that textbooks written in English are usually published either in the USA or in Great Britain, and their prices are exorbitant and beyond the means of great majority of Macedonian students. Nevertheless, professors regularly assign these textbooks in their courses. So, what is a student to do? Fortunately, digital copies of many of these textbooks can be found online on torrents and can be easily downloaded and re-distributed to other students. Because of their cost, it is very rare to find these textbooks in a public or university library. The library of one technical university in Macedonia as of this date has all of 22 books in its entire collection (http://www.uist.edu.mk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=97&Itemid=429&lang=en). By assigning impossible to find or purchase a textbook Macedonian professors in fact promote breaking international copyright laws.

I am familiar with the case of one professor at a faculty in Macedonia who assigned a list of twenty books written in English for a seminar. One of the students in the seminar approached me to find out if I have any of the assigned books. Unfortunately, I did not have any of them, nor could they be found anywhere in Macedonia other than in the professor's private library. The students in the seminar ended up borrowing and duplicating from the professor some of the books. Another student who had taken the same seminar the previous year told me that she duplicated about 3,500 pages in the course of the seminar.

The new law on higher education in Macedonia requires professors to post reading lists for their courses at the start of each semester. A cursory look at these lists indicates that these are either books written by the professor, or they are foreign books written in English. The lack of and easy access to textbooks does not seem to have been much of a concern to most professors. The Ministry of Education in recent years has tried to alleviate this problem by financing the translation of several hundred textbooks and other literature into Macedonian. While this on the surface may seem to be a logical solution, so far it has done very little to solve the problem.

First, no one is really sure how the Ministry selected the books to be translated. At news conferences and at book promotions the Minister claims that the books were selected by a committee of highly competent professors. But, it's hard to find a public list of these committee members anywhere. In other words, the book selection process was not transparent and it did not reflect the specific need of professors in specific areas.

Second, the word from the field is that the translations were done so poorly and in such haste that many of the textbooks are practically unusable. Apparently none of the translators were specialists in the fields in which they were translating. Translating is not a very highly paid skill in Macedonia, and to save money the government hired those translators who could complete the task at the cheapest possible rate.

Third, and most most important, the Ministry of Education approached this project without considering the specific needs of professors in the field. It was a top-down approach, and many professors resented being told which textbooks they should be using in their classes. Therefor, for all practical purposes the textbook translation project will end up being useless and a total waste of funds.

Now the question is, could the Ministry have handled this project in a different way so that it could have provided useful textbooks to professors and their students? The answer, in my opinion, is definitely yes. As a first step the Ministry should have distributed a survey to professors in the field to find out what are their specific needs. The Ministry should have set up a committee in each field to discuss possible lists of textbooks. All discussions and decisions should have been public and transparent. Once a selection was made, a textbook should have been translated by a group where there is at least one professor who is a specialist in the field. The next step before publishing should have been a testing period in the classroom for one year to see if the textbook is really appropriate for a given course. Only after that a decision on publishing the textbook should have been made.

When the Ministry of Education gets a complained that there is a lack of textbooks, the Minister's reply is often that professors should be writing textbooks since they are best qualified in their field. It is quite apparent that the Minister has absolutely no concept of what it takes to write a quality textbook. The reason why there are so many Macedonian textbooks of such poor quality is because they are written by highly qualified professors in the field, who have very little understanding of pedagogy. In addition, professors who are highly qualified to write high quality textbooks don't have an incentive to do this because there is no reward in it since the market is so negligible.

So, is there a solution for the problem with textbook at Macedonian institutions of higher education? The problem is not unsurmountable. However, as long as decisions about textbooks are made by political appointees, such as the Minister of Education, who don't have any practical experience in the educational process, it is certain that this problem will continue for the foreseeable future.