How Seselj's Law 2.0 is being prepared

I remember when the working group was formed for the adoption of Amendments to the Law on higher education which was later adopted in 2017. I was also its member. I naively believed that, despite the differences in political orientation, the members of the working group would have a common desire and interest to improve higher education. Although the working group met regularly, there was no transparent process and the final version of the draft did not contain what I expected. With that law, the state defined the appropriate composition of the council university and the faculty and thus ensured that it controls them when making important decisions such as the election of a rector or a dean.

That experience influenced me to see with different eyes how the ruling party achieves its goals. Over the years, there were more regulations that served the purpose of controlling faculties and higher vocational schools. There have also been several unsuccessful attempts to reform the way higher education is financed, a problem that has been a serious obstacle to the more efficient work of academic institutions for many years. Over the years, the academic community knew less and less about the effects of those working groups, and the proposals of certain laws went through the process of adoption and officialization without serious public discussions.

Thus, in the Amendments to the Law on Higher Education from 2021, the position "Consent for the teaching service of the competent body of the church or religious community for selection as a teacher is a mandatory condition for establishing an employment relationship". The significance of this decision and the way in which it undermines the autonomy of the university has never been seriously discussed to this day.

When I heard the news that on May 8, a Working Group was formed to analyze the current state of financing and performance of higher education in the Republic of Serbia and draft the Law on Higher Education, which should determine measures for its optimal financing and that it should complete this task in three months, all the negative experiences from the beginning of the text came back to me. The President of the Conference of Serbian Universities and Rector of the University of Belgrade Vladan Đokić was faced with the accomplished act of practically defending the university by himself against 19 other members of the Working Group for whom there are justified doubts that they will defend the party's and not the academic interest, although there are people among them who know the difference very well.

photo: marija janković

We cannot know what will be found in the new Law, although there is already a lot of speculation about it. It remains to be seen whether the Government will appoint rectors and deans, how renegade faculties will be punished under the tutelage of performance indicators and whether vouchers will be distributed.

Serbia is not the only country where some aspects of organizational autonomy are limited. The European University Association regularly monitors the degree of autonomy in higher education systems in Europe. The last such analysis was published in 2023 and it states, among other things, that in 11 percent of higher education systems in Europe, university rectors are selected or confirmed by a body outside the institution. At the moment, Serbia is not yet among them. However, Serbia is in 11 percent of the systems in Europe in which the financing of higher education institutions is very inflexible and defined by rigid budget lines, while 51 percent of the systems have no restrictions in the distribution of financial resources.

Circumstances inevitably bring us back to the University Law or Seselj's Law, adopted in May 1998. In the 2002s, students and the opposition fought together against the Milosevic regime. Seselj's law had the task of stifling, frightening and humiliating the academic community. Although the law caused a lot of damage to academic institutions in Serbia, it did not destroy the universities and all the values ​​they carry. And the fight against the regime continued until Milosevic's final fall. However, it took until XNUMX for the law to be repealed and some of the injustice done, at least formally, to be corrected.

Today, the circumstances are different. The regime has become deeply entrenched and despite mass protests and citizens freed from fear and moved by hope, a change in the system is not yet in sight although it is clear that nothing will be the same again. That is why we must not remain silent in the face of this attack on higher education. We must not accept this farce with the Working Group that will play a show of preparing laws and indicators when the draft document and indicators probably already exist or are in the final stages of development. Seselj's law is the source and inspiration for the new law. Therefore, it is not out of place to recall some articles of that law.

Of course, a lot has changed since 1998, and since then there have been changes in the organization of higher education. The current Law on Higher Education has been amended several times in the previous period and adjusted so that the government can control higher education institutions. Adopting the spirit of Seselj's law can complete that process. Let's recall several of his most significant items related to the election of the rector and dean, whose mandate then lasted two years. For example, Article 109, paragraph 2, i.e. Article 122, paragraph 2: The rector or dean has the rights and duties of a company director, unless otherwise determined by this law. Article 110, paragraph 2, i.e. Article 123, paragraph 2: The rector of the university or the dean of the faculty founded by the Republic is appointed and dismissed by the Government.

Instead of councils, there were governing boards where the state had a majority if it controlled a few more institution or student representatives (similar to current law). Except in the case of student representatives, whose mandate lasted for two years, the mandate of the members of the governing boards lasted a full five years!

By the summer, we will know the content of the draft of the new law and new measures for financing higher education institutions. It is very possible that the Amendments to the Law on Higher Education of March 6, 2025, which were adopted in response to the fourth request of the blocked students, will be annulled. I believe that the academic community and citizens will stand up in defense of the university. I don't know if the new law will be adopted. But if history repeats itself, I see the adoption of the new law as a foreshadowing of events that inevitably lead to the fall of the regime that denies Serbia a future.