Orešković’s “stay hungry” for students could be taken literally

Recently, we had the opportunity to see an interesting performance by Prime Minister Orešković, where he quoted the legendary Steve Jobs to students, telling them: “Stay hungry,” and then translated it into Croatian, saying: “Ostanite gladni.”

Of course, everyone reported this and interpreted it as a somewhat clumsy statement, but with good intentions and a message that Croatian students truly need, as it is the approach they should have. They should always be hungry for new knowledge and new challenges.

However, let us think a little about what governments (including this one) and universities have done to encourage the educational system to progress, thereby showing students by example that they are there for them and inspiring them to take a more proactive approach to education.

So let’s start from the beginning… The University of Zagreb has fallen off the list of the 500 best universities in the world. Many faculties have been plagued by scandals related to bribery, corruption, and nepotism. The connection between universities and the real sector is almost non-existent. Food prices in student cafeterias have doubled in recent years. The price of accommodation in student dormitories at the University of Zagreb has increased. The curricular reform has been halted. And with the new budget, funding for the Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports has been reduced by about 150 million kuna.

But this reduction did not happen only this year. If we look a little further back, the share of expenditure allocated to the Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports in relation to GDP began to decrease back in 2009, and that trend has continued to this day. Even in 2009, the share of funds allocated to the Ministry was only about 3.6% of GDP. However, what is particularly concerning is that this share has decreased in relation to GDP even though GDP has been falling year after year. Therefore, this reduction is more significant than it may seem at first glance. It will be particularly interesting to see this data for this year, considering that we have had GDP growth and a reduction in funding for the Ministry, so the decline in the share of the Ministry’s expenditure in GDP will likely be even faster, probably dropping to around 3%, if not below that. If we look at the Ministry’s expenditure as a share of the budget, its share has already decreased from 9.1% to 7.6% between 2012 and 2014.

We can also add that with investments in research and development below 1% of GDP, we are a country where it can be said that research and development hardly exist. As a consequence of all this, we are at the bottom of Europe in terms of the number of patents, which decreases the competitiveness of our economy.

So now, with all the aforementioned problems, I return to Prime Minister Orešković’s statement where he told students to stay hungry, and I fear that the man himself is not even aware of how right he was. Unfortunately, he is right in the literal sense of that phrase, not metaphorically, as he intended to convey. And so we have no choice but to hope that the government will start making positive changes in the educational system next year (because this one is lost) regarding the curriculum, the collaboration between science and businesses, and the funding for the Ministry, while our students will evidently have to find quality education outside of Croatia until then.