"IT WILL ENCOURAGE DIALOGUE BETWEEN UNIVERSITIES AND MINISTRIES"

The University of Montenegro is involved in a regional project to strengthen university autonomy

"The project aims to reach up to 50,000 people dealing with higher education and other related topics in Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo," Micanovic said.

The University of Montenegro is involved in the first regional project that will publish a scoreboard on the autonomy, transparency and accountability of Western Balkan universities and open a forum for discussion with decision makers in partner countries.

"The universities of Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania are involved in the project, and the goal is to improve the process and mechanisms of university autonomy by increasing the management capacity, accountability and transparency of Western Balkan universities," said Montenegrin Vice Rector and Project Manager Veselin Micanovic.

The University said that the project indicated the need for a holistic approach to strengthening university autonomy, in four special dimensions - organizational, academic, personnel and financial autonomy, which are also the most important priorities for university management in Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro.

"Through project activities, we will seek to improve governance through capacity building, exchange of experiences with partner countries, EU members, infrastructure upgrades, as well as through strengthening regulations and structures at national and university level. A mix of bottom-up and top-down approaches will be used in the project, it will encourage dialogue between universities and ministries, and thus enable more efficient implementation of the project ", explained Mićanović.

What is especially important, he added, is that the project will establish an expert network on autonomy, exchange good practice of EU partners.

"The project aims to reach up to 50,000 people dealing with higher education and other related topics in Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo," he said.

According to the University, this is a project "Strengthening university autonomy and increasing the responsibility and transparency of Western Balkan universities", under the acronym STAND, which, through the Erasmus + program, is funded by the European Union.

The value of this three-year regional project is 999,081 euros. The partner countries in this project are Albania, Belgium, Croatia, the Republic of Northern Macedonia, Germany, Italy, Kosovo and Montenegro.