Higher Education, Corruption and Whistleblowers
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HIGHER EDUCATION, CORRUPTION AND WHISTLEBLOWERS INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC RESEARCH AND EDUCATION HIGHER EDUCATION, CORRUPTION AND WHISTLEBLOWERS Proceedings of the International conference on Corruption in Higher Education held on September 11, 2018 at South East European University, Skopje, Macedonia Skopje, 2018 INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC RESEARCH AND EDUCATION HIGHER EDUCATION, CORRUPTION AND WHISTLEBLOWERS Proceedings of the International conference on Corruption in Higher Education held on September 11, 2018 at South East European University, Skopje, Macedonia INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC RESEARCH AND EDUCATION www.isie.org.mk www.univerzitetbezkorupcija.mk For the publisher: EditorialMišo Dokmanović board: Prof. Patrick Schmidt, Macalester Colledge (USA) Prof. Thomas H. Speedy Rice – Washington and Lee University (USA) Prof. Uglijesa Zvekic – Universita Roma Tre (Italy) Asst. Prof. Suncana Roksantic Vidilicka – Sveuciliste u Zagrebu (Croatia) Prof. Aleksandra Jordanoska – University of Manchester, School of law (United Kingdom) Assoc. Prof. Besa Arifi – South East European University (Macedonia) – Skopje (Macedonia)Asst. Prof. Sandra Radenović, University of Belgrade (Serbia) Assoc. Prof. dr. iur. Mišo Dokmanović, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University Printed by: Pan Computers&Print www.pan.mk The publication has been prepared within ISIE Corruption Free University project implemented in the period from October 2017 – September 2018. Corruption Free University was a 12-month project aimed at preventing corruption in higher education through strengthening the capacities of universities and student bodies in MK to implement the Whistleblower's Act. This publication was funded in part through a U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government or the Institute for Strategic Research and Education. 2 HIGHER EDUCATION, CORRUPTION AND WHISTLEBLOWERS LIST OF CONTENTS Patrick Schmidt and Paul Martin Introduction: The Horizons of Corruption in Higher Education .................. i Jeton Shasivari Corruption in Higher Education in the Republic of Macedonia: Fiction or Reality? ............................................................................................................................. 1 Olga Koshevaliska and Borka Tushevska Gavrilovik Building Capacities for Preventing Corruption in Higher Education in Macedonia ..................................................................................................................... 23 Nikola Tuntevski Opportunities for Protection in the Procedure or outside of the Procedure of the Whistleblowers or Witnesses, related to Corruption in Higher Education in the Republic of Macedonia and compared to other Countries ........................................................................................................................ 43 Mišo Dokmanović, Darko Spasevski and Katerina Shapkova Kocevska Preventing Corruption in Higher Education in Macedonia through Whistle-Blowing: Lessons Learned ..................................................................... 87 Sami Mehmeti The Practice of Predatory Publishing in the Academic Community in Macedonia .................................................................................................................. 101 Vlora Rechica Everybody Does It: Youth Acceptance and Ignorance of Corruption .. 117 Vasilka Sancin and Jan Marčič Maruško The Role of University Curricula in Corruption Prevention: The Case Study of the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Law ................................. 133 Besa Arifi Educating Students and University Staff on Whistleblowers' Protection as a Tool for Countering Corruption in Higher Education ....................... 164 INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC RESEARCH AND EDUCATION Snezana Sekulovska and Mirjana Nedelkovska Preventing Corruption through Education .................................................... 173 Alban Koçi and Enxhi Tamburi The Academic Holistic Approach to Fight Corruption .............................. 185 Aleksandra Deanoska – Trendafilova The Central Elements of the Whistleblowing Legislations from Comparative Perspective ...................................................................................... 197 Mladen Karadzovski Corruption in the Central and Local Public Administration in Macedonia: Analysis and Anticipation ............................................................ 217 4 HIGHER EDUCATION, CORRUPTION AND WHISTLEBLOWERS Introduction: The Horizons of Corruption in Higher Education Patrick Schmidt, Macalester College, Minnesota, USA Paul Martin, Wadham College, University of Oxford, UK Even in times of intense polarization and lack of public consensus there are two propositions which we might hope would find nearly universal assent. Simply, those propositions are: that corruption is bad, and higher education is good. The former is baked into language itself, because corruption, traced to its Latin origins, means the act of marring or destroying something. We often think of corruption in tandem with “virtue”, the qualities which should be most cherished. And, although innumerable policy questions surround what type of higher education people should receive, for what purpose, and how it should be provided and paid for, the evidence of its importance to national development and individual well-being around the world is too great to countenance a categorical challenge to the mission of advancing higher education. We shouldn’t overstate the consensus - we might not all agree about what constitutes corruption, or on what higher education is for, for example - but it is broad enough that worries about corruption in higher education are very widespread over both space and time. Beyond platitudes, however, too few people--from citizens to policymakers--in too few countries, have faced up to the catalogue of ignominies that lay at the intersection of corruption and higher education. The consequences of this gap threaten too much for this to continue. A series of scandals on the scale that Spain has experienced in recent months--with numerous leading politicians of multiple parties i INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC RESEARCH AND EDUCATION having their university degrees questioned--may turn heads, but it isn’t just the credentials of a select few that are at stake. The corrosion of education, by whatever mechanism, hurts both those who stand to benefit personally and also those around them, who cannot rely as much as they should on the qualifications of their fellow citizens. Higher education provides both transformative experiences for individuals and profound improvements for society in general, and both possibilities are challenged and demeaned if it is corrupted. This collection of papers, then, represents an important step forward for both Macedonian higher education and the lives of Macedonians. The conference organizers and the participants have put a spotlight on a range of higher education pathologies and a range of remedies that provide the potential for weakening those pathologies. It’s important to be clear, as many participants also point out, that the problem is not at all specific to Macedonia or the wider region; corruption in different ways is a challenge to all systems of higher education and universal vigilance is essential. In the brief overview that follows, we highlight some concerns and themes that animate their work, recognizing in particular that these papers represent a moment: an agenda for both scholarship and action. What are the possibilities that we see in this moment? The Scope of the Challenge Mindful of the need to define the problem before setting out to solve it, numerous contributors to this collection appropriately offer definitions of corruption in higher education. Working directly to craft a definition has its rewards, as Olga Koshevaliska and Borka Tushevska Gavrilovik show. A useful definition is general enough to encompass several core concerns and to hold meaning when applied across national contexts. The narrow sense of quid-pro-quo, transactional corruption lay at the heart of the concept, and to be sure, bribery for grades and diplomas remains distressingly common. We suspect also that the #MeToo movement has only scratched the surface of the abuses of power that work systematically to the disadvantage of women in higher education. Among the papers in this collection, Jeton Shasivari usefully extends this analysis across a divide that is commonplace in corruption research: between petty corruption and grand corruption. Indeed, the individual abuses of power that occur within higher education deserve to be at the forefront of this agenda. But the concept of corruption pulls further: not just the ways that power is exerted over ii HIGHER EDUCATION, CORRUPTION AND WHISTLEBLOWERS others, in exchanges concerning the “goods” that universities offer the marketplace (access, credentials, and authority), but also in the loss of virtue, as institutions deviate from core mission values and detract from the confidence and trust that is their lifeblood. In the United States case, the dramatic scale of university athletics exemplifies both the narrow and broad sense of corruption. In recent years, scandals have exposed the financial payments that connect leading athletic coaches to shoe and apparel companies, as well as systems designed to award grades and degrees to underperforming student-athletes who spend frightfully