Centre for Civic Education (CCE) is once again perplexed by the tone and vocabulary in the reaction of the University of Montenegro (UOM), within its attempt to discredit the CCE’s work. Apart from the avalanche of tags, which becames seal of the unsigned reactions of UOM at the expense of CCE’s statements, we still have not received the answers to some of the key questions. Hence, this is at the level of already seen, uncreative and unsubstantiated slanders, or an expression which is not suitable for a higher education institution but at the same time confirms the CCE’s claims regarding the academic spirit at UoM.
CCE emphasised the issue of urgent solving of student enrolment on Higher Medical School in Berane, while staying neutral between two conflicted, and until recently, very close sides, because the situation is not all black and white. This was clearly elaborated in CCE’s announcement, for all those who were willing and knowledgable to read it carefully.
CCE has been monitoring the state of affairs at the UOM for a decade now, and our efforts to contribute to improvement of quality of higher education in Montenegro and transparency of work of higher education institutions have been recognised by the students, overall Montenegrin public, as well as the international partners and donors. Precisely because of the students who came to us, we had to involve publically and appeal to resolve this issue urgently.
As far as the facts are concerned, here are a few reminders.
Had the reform not been hasty, we would not be in the situation where interested students find about the changes such as the seat of certain unit of UoM during the enrolment.
Had the reform not been illegal, we would not have to speed up the amendments of Law on Higher Education in order to create some sort of conditions to make this academic year start in a manner which would not jeopardise someone’s diploma in the future.
UoM did not post anywhere on its site that it has filed a lawsuit to Administrative Court with regards to decision of Ministry of Education from 3 July 2017, and there was a lot of announcements linked to matter. Of course, we would not be surprised if they added it retroactively, but CCE has print screens in its archive of all the announcements which UoM issued from 3 to 19 July 2017, in a chronological order and in print versions, being prepared for this type of events, due to similar occurrences from the past in relation to UoM.
Once again, CCE urges that students should be in focus instead of waisting time on exchange of statements.
Mira Popović, programme associate