Brnabic and Nikolic Clash on N1 Over Pay, Jovina School

Ana Brnabic, third on the “Aleksandar Vucic, United Serbia” list, and Mirjana Nikolic, rector of the University of Arts in Belgrade and ninetieth on the “Student List, Students Win” ticket, faced off last night, September 24, in the first thematic pre-election debate on N1 television. Journalist Tatjana Aleksic hosted the program, which was dedicated to education ahead of the snap parliamentary election on October 25. Although the topic was meant to be the education system, most of the debate’s opening segment was spent trading accusations.

Aleksic opened the debate by asking why Brnabic had now agreed to appear on N1, given that she had not been on the network’s programming since 2017, and whether the reason was public speculation about a drop in support for the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). Brnabic did not directly answer the question, even after the journalist repeated it several times, and instead raised a series of complaints about N1’s editorial policy.

“In previous election cycles, N1 did not even let our list pay for airtime to run campaign ads,” Brnabic said, adding that she did have a reason for coming to this debate.

“I came because Aleksandar Vucic insisted,” Brnabic said, explaining that the president had suggested she “give the network a chance” after its change of ownership.

Tensions rose when Brnabic accused Nikolic of not shaking her hand at the start of the program, calling it a gesture of “cultured Serbia.” Nikolic shot back that the label did not hold up.

“Cultured Serbia has yet to arrive. I would like us to responsibly tell the public what the Student List is planning and what you are planning,” Nikolic said, asking that the conversation return to education.

Teacher Pay and the Education Budget

When the conversation finally reached the announced topic, Brnabic laid out a series of figures on teacher pay and education funding under the SNS government. According to her, a teacher’s salary stood at 391 euros in 2012 and will reach 1,030 euros in December 2026, which she said amounts to 2.6 times more. She put university professors’ pay at around 77,000 dinars in 2012 against 191,000 dinars in December 2026. The education budget, she added, grew from 140 billion dinars in 2012 to 425 billion dinars in 2026, while preschool enrollment rose from 48 percent in 2011 to 64 percent in 2025.

Nikolic said the figures meant little without comparing them to real purchasing power, asking how much food and footwear a teacher could buy with that salary ten or fifteen years ago versus today. She also called for fully free education, not just free textbooks, along with modern curricula that teach critical thinking.

At one point Brnabic read out Articles 43 and 46 of the Higher Education Act, as well as Article 71 of the Constitution, and criticized the rector for failing, in her view, to stop political activity on campus during the blockades.

Jovina Gymnasium Takes Center Stage

A particular flashpoint was Jovina Gymnasium in Novi Sad. Brnabic defended principal Radivoje Stojkovic, who has held the post for 22 years, arguing that someone with that record of results knows what he is doing with the school. Nikolic replied that a school does not rest on one person but on the entire staff, and said more than 60 teachers had lost their jobs at the school while more than 60 students had left because of the instability.

The debate over education policy also turned to a 165 million euro loan that, according to Nikolic, was meant to fund construction of the Faculty of Biology, the Faculty of Geography and the Faculty of Music, of which, she claimed, only the Botanical Garden as part of the Faculty of Biology had been completed. Brnabic responded that the loan is not being repaid and that it had funded, among other things, the Lozionica cultural center in Belgrade.

Did the Broadcast Really End Early?

Pro government outlets, among them Informer, Alo and Kurir, claimed that under N1’s official schedule the program was supposed to run from 8 to 9:30 p.m. but was cut short around 9 p.m., half an hour before its planned end. They cited Brnabic’s stronger performance in the debate as the reason. N1’s own report on the debate makes no mention of the program being shortened, and no response from the network to that claim could be found.

After several interruptions and instances of talking over each other, the debate ended with the two women trading sharp assessments of each other’s competence. Nikolic, referring to the fact that Brnabic did not complete her studies in Serbia, closed her remarks with the words that defined the evening.

“Unlike you, who have no experience in education, as a professor I have to tell you, Ana, you failed, you failed the exam,” Nikolic said. Brnabic did not answer directly and instead continued defending the record of her term in office.

Earlier in the debate, Nikolic had also said she had no intention of justifying herself to someone who, in her words, had not gone through a single stage of education in Serbia. The outlet Alo reported the same point in a slightly different wording, but with essentially the same meaning.

The conversation about Serbia’s education system was not the last word on the topic. N1 has announced further thematic debates in the coming weeks, covering corruption and crime, the economy, foreign policy, and the rule of law and media freedom, where representatives of the electoral lists will debate the remaining key campaign issues ahead of the October 25 vote.