REGIONAL COOPERATION AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

PART IV:
evidence that human capital and education are potentially important driving forces in
the determination of long-run growth; see e.g. Lucas (1988), Barro (1991), Stern (1991)
Mankiw et al. (1992), Benhabib and Spiegel (1994), Rehme (2007), etc.
All in all, having in mind that higher education has a significant role in the development
of an individual as well as economy, higher education institutions are in front of a great
challenge of how they can respond appropriately to the needs of the society and the global
market.
3.
The process of higher education reform in the Balkan transition economies - case
study of Serbia
Increasing internationalization reaches also the worlds of teaching, learning and research.
Universities cannot escape the consequences of globalization and the heightened atmosphere
of competition this creates in a situation in which financial resources are harder to obtain.
The new trends can be seen in terms of universities as knowledge brokers, global markets
for students, international student and faculty mobility, international diploma recognition,
availability of programmes through Internet, and the development of strategic alliances
between institutions as providers on a global basis. Rapid advances in communication
technologies in recent years have made collaboration and co-operation between institutions
of higher education increasingly possible and desirable both within and among countries.
At the same time, reduced funding for research programmes make inter-institutional
collaboration increasingly necessary. Not all the internationally-geared changes are
positive, though, and higher education institutions in weaker countries risk loosing further
relevance unless adequate strategies of twinning and co-operation are set in place. At the
same time, higher education institutions have a key contribution to make to realizing both
sub-regional imperatives and at the regional levels within distinct national contexts where
the role of higher education institutions as actors of regional economic development/agents
of urban development is growing rapidly.
Confronted with those challenges, Balkan transition economies had to keep pace
with the trend of reforms in the process of obtaining higher education qualifications in
Europe, defined by the Bologna process and EHEA (European Higher Education Area).
The intention is to make it possible for students to compare their qualifications with the
qualifications acquired by students at other European higher education institutions, as
well as the possibility of improvement of student exchange programmes or continuation
of studies at a related institution in Europe, which is a prerequisite for future integration
processes and free exchange of intellectual resources in Europe.
All Balkan transition economies made a series of measures in order to implement Bologna
declaration, but here it will be presented the measures that Serbia made. Namely, the
Republic of Serbia adopted the Law on Higher Education in 2005, which implements
completely the Bologna Declaration, signed by Serbia in September 2003. With that
act Serbia bound itself to coordinate higher education policy with a group of European
countries, the aim of it being to form European zone of higher education by 2010 and, at
the same time, to preserve cultural, linguistic and national specificities, which is one of
the basic postulates of Bologna Declaration. According to Article II of the Law on Higher
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