The Centre for Civic Education (CCE) points out that the lack of transparency in the spending of student funds at the University of Montenegro (UCG) is not limited solely to the Rectorate and the Student Parliament of the University of Montenegro (SPUCG), but that the same practice is also present at UCG’s organisational units. For years, faculties have allocated significant funds to student councils and organisations, mostly without any system of oversight or subsequent verification of how those funds are spent.
According to data provided by UCG faculties to CCE in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information, 15 faculties and academies have allocated a total of more than EUR 670,000 since 2020 for financing student councils, organisations, and individual student activities. These funds are allocated in addition to the more than EUR 1.35 million received by SPUCG during the same period, bringing the total amount of public funds directed towards student bodies within UCG to more than EUR 2 million.
The Faculty of Law allocated the largest amount, around EUR 177,000, followed by the Faculty of Economics with more than EUR 86,000, the Faculty of Electrical Engineering with around EUR 80,000, and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering with around EUR 74,000. The Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Philology each allocated around EUR 40,000, while the Faculty of Political Sciences, the Faculty of Civil Engineering, the Biotechnical Faculty, and the Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management individually allocated between EUR 24,000 and EUR 35,000. The smallest allocations, ranging from around EUR 7,000 to EUR 16,000, were recorded at the Faculty for Sport and Physical Education, the Music Academy, the Faculty of Metallurgy and Technology, and the Faculty of Medicine.
The vast majority of faculties disburse funds based on individual requests and applications submitted by student organisations, without requiring those organisations to subsequently provide evidence of how the funds were spent. In the submitted documentation, faculties often state that they are not in possession of follow-up reports or other documentation on the expenditure of funds, confirming that a post-disbursement oversight system has generally not been established.
Additionally, there are examples showing a weakening of oversight mechanisms over time. Until 2023, the Faculty of Economics required student organisations to submit detailed reports on implemented activities, including descriptions of costs and the obligation to publish announcements and reports on each activity on the faculty’s website. However, since 2024, this practice has been significantly relaxed, and reporting is no longer nearly as detailed as it had previously been.
Still, there are also positive examples demonstrating that an oversight system can be established even within the existing legal framework. The Music Academy is one of the few organisational units of UCG that collects invoices, signed participant lists specifying the amounts received, as well as reports on implemented activities proving the actual expenditure of allocated funds. In this way, it is possible to monitor the actual spending of funds and ensure that every euro can be traced to its specific purpose.
There are also certain elements of good practice at other faculties, but at none of them is the financial oversight system fully established. The practice remains inconsistent and dependent on the goodwill of individual administrations, rather than being systematically regulated and mandatory at the UCG level. As a consequence, for the majority of funds transferred to student organisations, it cannot be determined whether, and to what extent, they were spent for the purposes for which they were allocated.
The absence of systematic oversight over the spending of student funds at most UCG faculties, persisting for years and across different administrations and generations of student representatives, increasingly points to the existence of a model that benefits certain interest groups rather than the public interest. The highest price is paid precisely by students, in whose name these funds are formally allocated, yet who have no possibility of determining how the money is actually spent.
The causes of this may also be linked to the manner in which student representatives are elected. Where electoral processes are conducted non-transparently, without public announcements and clear deadlines, while favouring pre-selected or “suitable” candidates, the absence of financial oversight is no longer merely a technical omission, but part of a system in which the same circle of people elects, finances, and oversees itself, without genuine accountability towards the student community. CCE has previously pointed to such patterns in the work of certain student structures within UCG, with the most recent example being the process of electing the student representative at the Faculty of Political Sciences.
CCE calls on the leadership of all UCG organisational units to establish clear and binding oversight mechanisms for the spending of funds transferred to student organisations. These mechanisms should include a standardised application form with a precise description of activities, planned costs, and expected results, as well as the obligation to submit receipts, invoices, and reports on implemented activities and spent funds as a condition for further disbursements. In addition, data on allocated and spent funds must be publicly available and regularly published so that students and the interested public can have insight into how money allocated in their name is being spent.
Finally, CCE calls on the UCG Rectorate to assume responsibility and establish a unified and binding mechanism for overseeing the expenditure of funds intended for student activities, applicable to all UCG organisational units without exception. Individual positive examples demonstrate that such a system is both possible and feasible, but also that institutional willingness is still lacking for it to become the rule rather than the exception. Without this, more than EUR 2 million in public funds allocated to student bodies within UCG in recent years remains beyond the reach of accountable public financial management, which is unacceptable for an institution that itself should serve as a model of transparency and accountability.
Jovana Radulović, Programme Assistant