Macut Meets Rectors After Belgrade University Exits Top 500

Serbia’s caretaker Prime Minister Djuro Macut met in Belgrade on September 24 with representatives from seven state universities, following the University of Belgrade’s drop on the Shanghai Ranking. The meeting brought together representatives of universities in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Nis, Novi Pazar and Pristina, as well as the University of Arts in Belgrade.

In this year’s Shanghai Ranking, the University of Belgrade fell out of the world’s top 500 universities and now sits in the 501 to 600 group. It remains the only Serbian university on the list, where it has appeared since 2012.

The meeting focused on the standing of domestic universities in international rankings, with emphasis on research output, the number and quality of scientific publications, citation counts, international cooperation and continuity of teaching. Macut said the ranking result is not a snapshot but the outcome of years of work.

“University autonomy also means responsibility. The state should provide the conditions for the system to work and develop, while universities are responsible for the organization and quality of teaching and research,” Macut said at the meeting.

The prime minister added that “this result should prompt a serious professional analysis,” since, as he put it, the effects of disruptions to university work are not visible right away but build up only through results accumulated over years. For that reason, he said, it is necessary to examine in time all the factors that led to the decline and to define concrete steps for improving the university’s standing.

Macut also said that continuity in teaching and in research are linked, so a slowdown in one area inevitably affects the other, with consequences for scientific output and the other indicators that feed into international rankings.

According to the government’s statement, the meeting was also attended by Marija Gnjatovic, state secretary at the Ministry of Science and Technological Development, Aleksandar Jovic, assistant minister of education, and Branko Markoski, the provincial secretary for higher education and research.

The meeting came a month and a half after Macut, when this year’s rankings were published in mid August, blamed the University of Belgrade’s leadership and the deans of several faculties for the decline, according to Danas. At this meeting, per the government’s statement, the prime minister did not repeat those accusations, saying instead that the state remains committed to providing the conditions for universities to work, while responsibility for organizing teaching and research lies with the institutions themselves.

“The goal is for us to jointly assess the situation, identify where the problems are and work on solving them,” Macut said, adding that Serbia has significant scientific and academic potential and that the work of domestic professors, researchers and students should be recognized in both the European and global academic space.

The government announced that its dialogue with the academic community will continue through concrete activities aimed at strengthening research, improving the quality of teaching, developing international cooperation and increasing the visibility of Serbian universities. No deadline or further details on these activities have been given so far.