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BiH could lose 62 million dollars of credit if the law on higher education
is not adopted by the end of March, Head of the OSCE Mission to BiH Robert Beecroft
told ONASA in an interview.
“The World Bank (WB) is prepared to allocate 62 million dollars, much of which
will go to higher education and to primary and secondary education, but only
providing that this law is through the parliament by the end of March",
Ambassador Beecroft said.
The BiH Council of Ministers is expected to discuss the draft law on higher
education on Monday, after which it is expected to be forwarded to the parliamentary
procedure. Beecroft said it would be tragic if considerations of politics and
of micro-management cause the law not to be approved by the parliament over
the next month and a half.
He did not want to say whether there is certain resistance within the BiH Council
of Ministers to this law, but he said that "we have discussed this with
the Council of Ministers at a number of levels and we are extremely hopeful
that on Monday it will be blessed and moved onto the parliament."
“That law is very carefully calibrated and has been discussed intensively over
a period of almost a year. It is calibrated to maintain the proper balance between
the central state and the lower levels, the entities and cantons. It is carefully
calibrated to allocate responsibilities between the central administration of
the universities and faculties and it is carefully calibrated to match resources
with needs", Beecroft said.
"This has not been easy since there are lots of interests at stake here",
he added.
According to Beecroft, the law sets up a rational structure for funding.
“Right now there is a mixed system - the BiH Federation is different than the
Republika Srpska (RS), and it basically is not consistent with standard practices
in Europe and it is wasteful", Ambassador Beecroft said.
The law proposes the higher education fund that will be established at the
entity level, and representatives of the higher education institutions will
be required to participate in the work of the fund and in the decision-making
process.
"A director of each fund will be selected in co-operation with the Civil
Service Agency, that is to say that he will not be someone's political friend,
but somebody who is really competent for the job”, Beecroft said.
According to Beecroft, these bodies will give general instructions, general
directions on how the funds will be administrated and will require that there
be adequate accountability and recording of how money is spent.
He added that the governing board of the higher education institution will
have full discretion of the allocation of funding within it.
“I do not know if it is the best model, but it is the model that the law proposes
and it is certainly a better model that the one that exists now”, Beecroft said,
adding that OSCE absolutely supports the proposed model.
Speaking on the Centre for Information, Recognition and Quality Assessment
(CIRQA), Beecroft said there is a lot of debate about whether it should be at
the central or entity, or a combination of both.
CIRQA, based on common norms, provides for licensing of institutions, establishes
criteria for accreditation and auditing the quality of universities, it sets
procedures for auditing, for following the enrolment of students - who is getting
in and what the standards are - and it also sets policy for recognition of foreign
diplomas and diplomas within BiH.
“We now have the bizarre situation where somebody can come back here with diplomas
from Sorbonne or from Oxford or from Harvard and they will not be recognised.
And it is even worse in the opposite direction, because there is no understanding
outside of BiH of what the diploma from the university inside this country may
or may not be worth”, Beecroft said.
The existing universities will have four years to get themselves in line with
requirements set up by CIRQA.
According to Beecroft, if the proposed draft law on higher education is not
adopted by the end of March, there will continue to be multiple systems within
BiH in higher education, there will be a confusion about diplomas from outside
that come in, funding will continue to be unpredictable, it will just be a continuation
of a kind of confusion and chaos which now is the case.
Last week, a message of concern over the slow implementation of reforms was
sent by the international community to the BiH authorities.
According to Beecroft, there are two key measures of the seriousness of the
authorities of this country and the clock is ticking - one is NATO's Partnership
for Peace and the other is the stabilization and association process with 16
conditions from the European Union (EU).
“In both cases, we are concerned that we are not seeing a kind of energy and
a kind of vision and a kind of leadership necessary to succeed with these. And
the clock is ticking”, he said.
According to Beecroft, BiH can overcome these problems, but "whether it
will - that's entirely up to the leaders and the people of the country."
“I'm certainly not going to be drawn into a discussion on the leadership of
this country. We expect leaders to lead”, he said.
Beecroft did not want to answer the question which political parties, national
or civic, could win at the elections scheduled for October.
“I am not here to pass judgment on the parties' performances; the voters are”,
he said.
According to Beecroft, there is not enough money to organize and maintain the
municipal elections, because out of 147 municiplality, only 40 per cent of them
have allocated some funds to elections, and only one has allocated the full
amount needed.
“I hope that the election will not be postponed, but you cannot organize them
without money”, said Beecroft.
There have been proposals that the entities provide financial means in case
the municipalities are not capable of doing that, but Beecroft is against that
since it is important that municipalities take over their own responsibilities.
He said that the OSCE Mission will not supervise the elections, adding that
there could be a few observers that are coming from the outside, but that will
not be supervision.
“The Organization for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights within the OSCE
sometimes sends the observers, but I do not know if they will do that”, Beecroft
said.
According to him, the reason that the contributions have been slowly coming
is the fact that these are the first elections that the BiH authorities are
organizing by themselves. He said he hopes that there will be no prolongation
of the elections and that they will be held within the agreed deadline.
“Everyone has to understand here that these elections and the elections after
that and the elections after that and so on are the responsibility of the authorities
and citizens of BiH”, Beecroft said.
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