34% of new enrollments chose private studies this academic year

2024-10-10 08:28:00, Aktualitet CNA

The number of students is rapidly decreasing, due to the reduction of the young population, but in recent years more and more graduates are choosing private institutions of higher education.

Data from the Student Portal show that in the academic year 2024-2025, about 15,111 graduates have chosen to pursue higher studies, of which 9,920 were enrolled in public universities with a 19% decrease from last year, while they chose to study in private 5191 students or 34.4% of the total number of students.

In total, 15,111 students have been registered so far, while the total number of quotas in all study programs of Higher Education Institutions in Albania is 30,805, of which more than half remained free, refer to the data from the Student Portal.

Estimates show that in the country's top 10 universities, 41.3% of branches are at risk of closing due to lack of students. At the University of Gjirokastra, 81.8% of branches are at risk of being closed as they do not meet the minimum number of students.

Student Portal data show that 42.8% of study programs that are a national priority are at risk of being closed as students have not shown interest in them.

Almost the same fees and greater flexibility of study programs are driving more and more students to private. Data from INSTAT show that in 2023 there were a total of 32,387 female students in Private Higher Education Institutions or 32 percent more. In the same period, the number of students in public universities decreased by 27%.

Based on this trend, the auditoriums at the Public Universities risk being empty sooner than expected, as the reduction of students is not accompanied by an increase in quality.

The academic staff in Albanian universities, like all other public functions, is underpaid. In public universities, lecturers are two or three employees, and working at the university may be the last commitment for many of them. In many cases, the quality of teaching is seriously affected by this fact.

Demographic developments announce that during the next decade we will again have a halving of students. The drop in births and immigration concentrated in young ages is expected to bring the total number of students enrolled in the first year to no more than 10,000 in the following years.

The mentality that higher education is needed created an inflation of diplomas which were not translated into professions. Most of the young graduates in the last two decades were employed in call centers and waitresses in service units as a result of the mismatch between school and degree.

Developments in higher education in the last two decades have made graduates more skeptical. From 2016 to 2022, a high flow of young people have emigrated and this phenomenon, together with the decline in births years ago, is leading to a reduction in students. Last year, according to INSTAT, about 116 thousand students were registered in local universities and this year it has been further reduced./ Monitor.al