The St. Kliment Ohridski University in Bitola opens its second enrolment round on 9 September, with 1,288 places free for first-year students. Of those, 523 are full-time state-funded, 424 are co-financed and 341 are for part-time study.

The number is worth reading for what it is: more than twelve hundred young people the university expected and who did not turn up in the first round. For a university based outside Skopje, that is not a technical formality - it is a diagnosis.

The most free places are at the Technical Faculty - 269 across all programmes. The fewest are in mechatronics and environmental and occupational safety engineering, where significant interest was recorded in the first round. The Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies has 174 places open, the Pedagogical Faculty 190, the Faculty of Biotechnical Sciences 66, and the Veterinary Faculty the fewest - 15 in total.

A second round on 9, 10 and 11 September will also run at the university's faculties outside Bitola: 66 places remain at the Faculty of Security in Skopje, 59 at the Law Faculty in Kičevo, 92 at the Technological-Technical Faculty in Veles, 121 at the Economics Faculty in Prilep and another 148 at the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality in Ohrid. The Higher Medical School in Bitola also has a second round, with 88 places left.

Look at the distribution. The emptiest is the Technical Faculty with 269 places, while mechatronics and environmental protection - two programmes at that very faculty - filled their quota back in the first round. So the problem is not that young people are fleeing technical subjects as such; it is which specific programmes convince them they are worth it.

The university publishes the figures in a businesslike tone, as though this were an administrative deadline. But 1,288 empty places are not a deadline - they are the gap between what the institution planned and what reality handed back. Is anyone at the university analysing that gap, or just waiting for the third enrolment week?