Ministry of Education considering foundation of new IT faculty

A new IT faculty will be established if no agreement is reached with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering about the foundation of a lateral Department of Information Technology, Minister of Education Mladen Sarcevic said on Tuesday, March 6, 2018, at the Kopaonik Business Forum.

He says that the option of founding a department at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering was still open, but that they were looking into other options, such as founding a new faculty, in case this failed to happen.

– So far, we have advocated for the new faculty to be located in New Belgrade in the form of a modern building of 11,000 square meters. This is not something we are doing for the next two years, this is the future and it is still early to discuss potential quotas at the faculty – Sarcevic said.

He reminded that all the faculties in Serbia with IT departments had increased their quotas by a total of 756 admits.

– We expect even more faculties to join this year, even outposts, but also faculties not primarily dealing with IT, but maybe in a secondary capacity, such as the Teacher Education Faculty and the Faculty of Economics – the minister of education said.

Sarcevic also said that the Law on Science and Research Activities was being prepared and added that a new model of financing faculties and measuring the quality of higher education institutions was being worked on.

– Much better days for higher education lie ahead. New companies are arriving with their development centers – Sarcevic said.

The Law on Science also envisaged the foundation of the National Science Fund, modeled after the US one.

At the same time, the president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Vladimir Kostic, says that a special ministry of science and higher education should be formed and that there are no major objections to it, but that it is still not being realized. The budget funds planned in 2015, he said, amounted to 1.5% of the GDP, but this was not realized, making the percentage amount to under 0.5% of the GDP.

– Direct material costs for project researchers amounted to RSD 165 per researcher a day, that is, RSD 5,000 a month – Kostic emphasized.

Ministarstvo prosvete Republike Srbije

SANU Beograd

ETF Beograd

Ekonomski fakultet Beograd

Učiteljski fakultet Beograd

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts

IT faculty

Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Department of Information Technologies

Kopaonik Business Forum

Mladen Sarcevic

IT education

information technology

Law on Science and Research Activities

higher education in Serbia

Law on Science

National Science Fund

SASA

Vladimir Kostic

ministry of science and higher education

educating IT experts

IT workforce