The Rulebook Demands a Points Column, the Ministry Published Lists Without One: Janevska Calls It Disinformation

The rulebook on admitting students to state student dormitories, article 13, is written in capital letters exactly where it matters: "The list of students WITH THE POINTS AWARDED is published on the website of the Ministry of Education and Science and on the websites of the dormitories."

The rulebook is new - adopted around two months ago. It carries the signature of the minister of education and science, Vesna Janevska.

And the ministry published only lists of admitted students by dormitory. With personal and administrative data, but without the column showing the points on which the ranking was based.

The answer: "fake news"

Janevska rejected the accusations. She insists every admission was carried out through proper channels and that those rejected did not meet the conditions.

"It is regrettable that disinformation is being spread in public. The rankings have been published, both for those admitted and for those not admitted, with an explanation of why they were not admitted", the minister said. She pointed out that among the rejected are students in their seventh or eighth year of study, as well as students whose parents have high incomes. The criteria, she says, are publicly stated in the call.

The problem is that the opposition party Levica is disputing neither the procedure nor the criteria. It is asking one question: where are the points?

Why the points are not an administrative detail

The rulebook sets out in detail how they are calculated - by category, academic performance, family financial situation and regularity of study, with fixed formulas and a maximum of 100 points.

If the points are the basis for the ranking and the lists are published without them, then a student has no way of checking why one candidate was admitted and another rejected. They cannot see where the cut-off fell, or whether the criteria were applied equally to everyone.

In other words: a published list without points is not a verifiable list. It is an announcement.

The State Audit Office warned about this too

And this is where the story stops being a party squabble. For the 2022/2023 competition, auditors received no supporting documentation that the ministry had carried out any scoring at all - they established that applications were processed by hand and entered into Excel tables, without scoring.

The audit office's conclusion was unambiguous: the absence of scoring and that manner of publishing rankings makes subjective treatment and favouritism possible.

So this is not some new theory invented by the opposition. It is a problem the state auditor has already documented - and the rulebook from two months ago was supposed to close precisely that problem.

One question, one answer

The question is narrow and has an exact answer: in which document, on which page, are the points of the admitted and rejected candidates?

When a question like that is answered with "disinformation is being spread", it does not close the question. It underlines it.

Publishing one column of numbers is a ten-minute job. Everything else is a choice.