Balint Conditions Nis Philosophy Faculty Accreditation
The Science Ministry wants the Philosophy Faculty in Nis to hand over three departments before its accreditation is renewed, despite a court injunction. Professors responded with a statement.
Serbia’s Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation sent a letter on September 8 to the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Nis, addressed to Dean Vladimir Jovanovic, demanding that the faculty submit an entirely new application for reaccreditation of its research activity. The letter was signed by Minister Bela Balint. The condition for the process to continue is that the faculty align its application with the status change from November 2025, when the Serbian government established the Faculty of Serbian Studies and split three departments off from the Philosophy Faculty: history, Serbian studies, and Russian language and literature. Professors responded to the minister with a statement the following day, September 9.
The ministry’s letter states that the competent expert body cannot conclude the accreditation process on the basis of the existing application, because it contains shortcomings and its data no longer match the faculty’s current legal, organizational and staffing situation. Balint points to the decision establishing the Faculty of Serbian Studies as the very reason for that mismatch.
It is necessary for the Philosophy Faculty to submit a revised reaccreditation application, aligned with the Faculty’s current legal, organizational, staffing and research situation, the minister’s letter states.
The letter further specifies that until that condition is met, the faculty will receive no final assessment of whether it meets the requirements for conducting research activity, nor will the process be concluded on the basis of the existing application.
Application Has Waited Almost Two Years for an Answer
The Philosophy Faculty filed its reaccreditation application back in December 2024 and submitted an amendment in June 2025. It expected an answer by October of last year. The ministry’s letter arrived almost two years after the original application was filed, and only after the legal status of the three departments in question had changed in the meantime.
That change comes with a court dispute attached. On June 8, the Administrative Court issued temporary injunctions suspending enforcement of the decisions granting a work permit to the Faculty of Serbian Studies and removing eight study programs from the Philosophy Faculty’s work permit. In other words, while the court proceedings run their course, those programs formally remain part of the Philosophy Faculty’s work permit, and the Faculty of Serbian Studies has no final, legally binding permit of its own. The Philosophy Faculty, for that matter, had already sued the Ministry of Education in April this year over the same dispute concerning the departments.
Professors Say Accreditation Must Not Be Used as Leverage
In their statement of September 9, professors at the Philosophy Faculty demanded that the ministry urgently conclude the reaccreditation process on the basis of the application already submitted, publicly explain the reason for the delay, comply with the Administrative Court’s injunction, and stop using the accreditation process as a tool of institutional and political pressure.
The message is clear and dangerous: an institution that refuses political obedience can have not only its teaching and funding jeopardized, but also its research status, the professors state in their statement.
The same statement says that “accreditation of research activity must not be a political lever.” The professors argue that, in practice, the faculty is being asked to act as though the status changes from the government’s decision had already taken full legal effect, even though their implementation has been temporarily halted by a court ruling, and that acting otherwise would violate that injunction.
The ministry has not publicly responded to the professors’ statement, nor has it explained why the answer to the 2024 application arrived only now, almost two years later and immediately after the dispute over the status of the three departments. Minister Balint’s letter, on the other hand, leaves no room for interpretation: without a revised application, it states, the expert body will not be able to continue the process at all.
The dispute thus remains open on two tracks at once, administrative and academic. The Administrative Court has not yet issued a final ruling on the work permits, and the Philosophy Faculty’s reaccreditation process depends precisely on the outcome of that dispute, even as the ministry asks the faculty to act as though the dispute had already been resolved in favor of the Faculty of Serbian Studies.
