Recommending
Policies to Provide Equal Access to Higher Education
Macedonia
April – May 2000
 Macedonia
gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Although Macedonia
did not undergo the violence and conflict that touched
other parts of the former Yugoslavia, underlying tensions
along lines of ethnicity, language, and religion remained—and
affected equitable access to higher education.
BEPS was asked
to develop a policy options paper for the USAID/Macedonia
program that provided technical assistance
to higher education in Macedonia. This paper addressed
the issue of bringing ethnic minorities increasingly into
the mainstream of Macedonia, ensuring them equal access
to jobs and fully integrating them into the economy of
Macedonia.
After reviewing relevant information
and interviewing principal stakeholders, the BEPS team
identified major
deficiencies in the teaching of Macedonian, the country’s
official language, in schools where Albanian or another
minority language is the language of instruction. The team
also found that minority students were treated unfairly
in university admissions, with more stringent admissions
criteria being applied to ethnic Macedonians than to those
of any other nationality in Macedonia.
BEPS concluded that the Van der Stoel
proposal of the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE)
laid the foundations for a political solution to the educational
dimension of ethnic tensions and that policy would benefit
from supporting the OSCE proposal. The BEPS team then developed
policy options that would provide long-term benefits to
the ethnic groups involved and proposed actions for new
legislation.
Resources
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