Montenegro (UoM), expresses serious concern about the lack of control of the management of all faculty units at the UoM. This is exactly what constitutes as popular retorics all the frequently repeated announcements about these actions by the president of the Administrative Board of the UoM – Duško Bjelica. Their aim is to camouflage reluctance of the UoM’s leadership to finally start with solving of the accumulated problems that the CCE continuously points out.
CCE repeats that the announced control, if it ever occurs, must be conducted at all the faculties at the same time, thus proving that there are no protected or private interests that are stronger than the public one, as the UoM used to justify in its practice.
The reasons for control are numerous. These start from the financial management: how and in what manner travel expenses were paid, and whether all of these travels were justified and in the interests of the University, based on what the fees were calculated, how public procurement were planned and how realistic they are considering the crisis that has hit the UoM, how were the funds outside the budget earned, and how were these funds further allocated, etc. Moreover, the checks of work engagement are necessary, especially in regard if at these faculties are those professors who really hold classes, while the same persons do nearly nothing at the faculties where they have permanent contracts and are not taken accountable for their absence, because they are “covered” by the assistants (meaning that they perform all of their obligations including even writing scientific works for them, because they are threatened by the same professors that they would not sign their re-election!), and in what way the same professors receive enormous profits. Which is the act prescribing that lectures ad exams are scheduled on Sundays and days of national and religious holidays, which can only be interpreted as overloading of the norm, with the purpose of increasing the earnings of privileged professors. There is also a question of nomination to the position of teaching staff and whether they fulfill all the requirements to be elected, as well as the problem of double employment of professors who work at several universities, while some private faculties report fictitious lists of employees who work at the UoM, only in order to acquire a work permission or to be accredited. Earlier activities of the UoM’s management should be also examined, particularly how the escalation of aforementioned problems could even occur. It should not be forgotten that the process and methods of the scoring list created during controversial apartments distribution since 2008 have never been adequately examined, as well as that the UoM has never submitted to the public their contracts with third parties over €10,000 and over €100,000, for which CCE got all the charges, whereat the University of Montenegro failed to comply with decision of the competent authority.
Furthermore, the Accreditation Commission is expected to identify, from 2008 until today, the lack of accreditation of individual branch departments/faculties, or accreditation and licence of certain faculty departments, which was the case of the specialist studies for Criminal Justice and Security at the Law Faculty of the UoM.
On the line of aforementioned, following questions are being raised: why the authorized Ministry of Education remains silent regarding such obvious problems and fails to address them within its jurisdiction, and why doesn’t it increase the number of education inspectors in order to quickly note the problems and solve them.
The crisis at the UoM is not decreasing. On the contrary, it deepens and seems that development of the events indicates inability of the UoM to cope with the political and other influences that threaten the public interest, with respect to the establishment of the quality high-education institution, which will be recognized for the knowledge that provides and not for scandals.
Snežana Kaluđerović, Programme Coordinator