Staff shortages, lack of literature. Uplink

Lack of academic staff, lack of literature, but also of infrastructure, are the challenges conveyed to Pristina University during 2018.

Except for the literature, UP's also missing students who read a lot.

Rector UP, Marjan Dema, in an interview for Kosova Prees, says that UP's challenges for him turned into goals, however, he acknowledges that the challenges of 2018 were the previous ones.

“The challenges also remain the old ones, the lack of academic staff, even though this year we have increased academic staff by 57 members of the new academic staff who for the first time have been elected assistants or professors, then, lack of infrastructure, new objects, is always a literature challenge, although for all of these we have found solutions, each has been processed”, Dema says.

It is the lack of literature that Demas considers one of UP's biggest challenges. In the absence of texts translated into Albanian, students are, in many cases, continuing to learn through material called scripts.

But Demas says that besides lack of literature, they also have a problem convincing students to learn about knowledge and read more.

We are very interested in motivating and asking students to use more foreign languages because we are living in a very dynamic world and in Albanian is hard to get too far. So this will be our goal, and the next goal is to translate as many contemporary literature as possible... This is a very big problem because we students come from elementary and high school, where most are taught about a” grade, Dema says.

The challenge for UP's continues to be cases of sexual harassment in this institution, where only in 2018 were several cases reported, and even students and civil society members protested before the reactor.

Despite that, no professor involved was dismissed, but projector Teuta Krasniqi-Pustina was dismissed because of her statements that were named sexist.

On this issue, Dema says he has formed a commission of experts with the aim of drafting a document through which the UPI aims to fight and downplay this phenomenon.

Despite challenges, Demas says that the UPP also reaped several successes during 2018.

My “expectations have been considered very ambitious, but for less than two years the University of Pristina has been established for more than 1500 countries, then I didn't even think that we would be listed on the database of scimago data, which is a base of very powerful data, where we are in the position of 713, which is a pretty big success because no university, no university, no college, no scientific institute in all Albanian space is listed. We're the only ones who've been able to list”, Dema claims.

During the term of Rector Dema, Pristina University, the decision came to the loss of the case against the Serbian Orthodox Church, with campus land scrapping itself becoming part of the church, but Dema shows that they have sent a course to court and is optimistic that they will win it.

I've consulted the best experts we've got inside the university even outside, who have prepared the subject and the subject sent to the court and we're waiting to proceed and we believe that we'll win this conflict, but even if we don't win it, we'll never stop because this is part of the university campus, it's at the heart of university campus”, Dema claims.

For this year, Demas tells of some projects that will take life in the UP. He for Kosova Prees has indicated that at the Faculty of Philology, they plan to establish media.

We took steps in journalism. The Steering Council has made the decision to establish the radio, we will also establish a portal, which means Pristina University is making progress”, Dema claims.

Otherwise, Rector Dema has promised that this year will increase the number of co-operations with institutions so that students can perform the practice and better prepare for the labour market.