Janevska: Quotas for New Students Cut by Around 2,000 Places Due to Labor Market Saturation in Some Professions

First-year student enrollment quotas have been reduced at all universities in North Macedonia. Minister of Education and Science Vesna Janevska explained that the decision is linked to labor market saturation and the high number of unemployed people in certain professions, while in other fields employability is very high and there is also a shortage of qualified staff.

Ahead of the start of university enrollment, Janevska announced that around 2,000 places have been cut across all higher education institutions this year. Nevertheless, she expressed confidence that every high school graduate would be able to find a place at the faculty where they wish to continue their studies.

According to her, the largest quota reductions have been made in business administration, public administration, and several programs at the Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Law, as these are the fields with the highest number of unemployed people. Adjustments have also been made to medical programs. Meanwhile, quotas for technical programs, including computer science, mechanical engineering, and civil engineering, have remained almost unchanged because their employment rate reaches 98-99 percent, Janevska said.

The minister expects discussions on the three laws related to higher education and science to continue through the end of this month. They have been blocked in Parliament by the Albanian opposition bloc, which is demanding that they be adopted under the Badinter principle.

Janevska said she believes reason will prevail and Parliament will manage to overcome political clashes so that these three laws are not used to resolve some other issue. She stressed that there have already been delays and that no more time should be wasted on political debates over such an important matter, adding that their adoption is in the interest of all young people in the country.

Speaking about school textbooks, Janevska announced that the process of distributing them to schools is nearing completion and that no shortages are expected during the 2026/2027 school year. She explained that schools that failed to submit the number of required textbooks on time will have to obtain them themselves, because the Ministry supplies them based on the orders submitted.

Regarding the enrollment of over 4,000 fewer first-grade pupils compared with last year, Janevska emphasized that the figure is not yet final and may change by the end of September. According to her, this situation is mainly because some parents have not yet enrolled their children, while some schools have not entered pupils into the E-Dnevnik electronic system.