Albania, financial management in the education system: Higher education

Recently, in Albania, the debate on the autonomy of higher education is growing. The debate is twofold; one is related with the problems of financing the higher education and the other in the choice of financial management system. The main resource of financing education and also higher education in Albania is the government, which means taxpayers, and a small part of the financing is coming by the tuition fees. In the case of Albania, when the GDP per capita is still low, the level of poverty is reasonable high; it is difficult for the students to afford the cost of higher education service. In the mean time the pressure from universities to increase the share of expenditures in higher education is pushing policymakers to think about the philosophy of the management of higher education in Albania. This paper is a thought-provoking paper that will try to help the stakeholders to find the best philosophy of financing and management of higher education. We agree that financial autonomy of universities is a superior system of the management of higher education but jumping to this system with the existing infrastructure, it is likely to fail.