With a ceremonial first lecture, the 2026/2027 academic year starts today at universities across Macedonia. The country has around 20 universities, and about 53,500 students are enrolled in undergraduate studies - 46,925 full-time and about 6,600 part-time. Some 13,800 of them are new freshmen, enrolling in first year for the first time.

The opening lecture is being held at the state universities: Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, St. Kliment Ohridski in Bitola, Goce Delchev in Shtip, the State University of Tetovo, Mother Teresa in Skopje and St. Paul the Apostle in Ohrid. Education and Science Minister Vesna Janevska will speak on the plaza of Ss. Cyril and Methodius University (UKIM), and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski in Shtip.

The country's largest and oldest university offered 8,851 places for freshmen across its 23 faculties this year. UKIM currently has more than 26,000 students, over 23,400 of them undergraduates, and the choice is wide: 242 study programmes at the first cycle, 313 at the second and 99 at the third. The university also has an old-new leadership - Rector Biljana Angelova won a new three-year term in the May election.

Ceremonial lectures, cultural programmes and politicians' speeches make a nice start. But the numbers at the start of the year only tell you how many young people got into university. The real exam for the education system is a different number, one that is rarely announced with the same fanfare: how many of these 13,800 freshmen will find a job in their field, in their own country, after they graduate.

That is unlikely to come up on the plaza today. And yet it is exactly the question students would most like the prime minister and the minister to answer: what is waiting for them once they have their diploma?