"The biggest and fastest decline in the quality of higher education is caused by uncontrolled distribution.

We have 25 universities.

From the quality, which was not bad, we turned it into poor quality", says Professor Todor Serafimovski, chairman of the National Council for Higher Education and Scientific-Research Activity.

He says that to compare with the universities ranked in the Shanghai list, we have to ask where our funding is and where our country is in terms of the percentage of segregation in higher education, even among the Balkan countries , not only among European ones.

Here we are below Kosovo, not to be compared with European countries.

"If we start from what are the salaries of regular professors, how much is the allocation for new technological programmatic needs of universities, the allocation for research-scientific activity has not moved in the last 30 years.

It is very little and does not offer progress, but survival", said Serafimovski.

The National Council for Educational and Scientific-Research Activity was formed in June 2021, in accordance with the Law on Higher Education from 2018. In the past period, the 15-member Council has worked on by-laws and new regulations, approved with the European directives, according to which the accreditation and evaluation councils must work.

The evaluation regulation has been approved and the competition for external experts who will be involved in the evaluation of local universities is now underway.

But the accreditation regulation has not been approved yet because this council has not responded to the Council's remarks.

The two councils, which are part of the Agency for Quality in Higher Education, do not fulfill their legal obligation, says Serafimovska, to submit six-monthly reports to the Council, which (together with the Ministry of Education and Culture) is the first level control. for their work.

"We are the first level control, but the Government should establish another, control should be from the inspection services in the state.

First, they should report to the National Council, which they have a legal obligation to do, but they do not allow it.

How will we achieve quality in higher education if we do not respect each other?", says Serafimovski.

As for how he comments on the fact that no university is ranked in the first thousand places of the Shanghai List, specifically UCM as the largest and oldest, he says that this issue is complex as it must not be forgotten that they are universities that exist for centuries, while our system of higher education "Kirill e Metodij" was formed 70 years ago.