Corruption remains one of Albania’s most stubborn obstacles toward development and its dream for European integration. Although the country marked its biggest historical leap in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for the year 2024, climbing by 18 places to rank 80th out of 180 states, corruption continues to cast roots in vital sectors of society: in the high levels of governance, public administration, healthcare and, increasingly, in higher education.
This article poses a fundamental question: when corruption appears within Albanian public universities, do these institutions have any internal mechanism to smell, report, and stop it? The answer, drawn from prosecution files and from a series of interviews and requests for information across the university system, is mostly “no”. Anti-corruption commitments exist beautifully on paper and in laws, but where students actually face bribery, institutional shields are fragile or nonexistent.
Strong Laws, Weak Enforcement
It seems that successive Albanian governments, regardless of political colors, have always maintained a harsh and uncompromising rhetorical stance against corruption. Even the legal architecture reflects this. Albania ratified the Civil Convention on Corruption, followed by the Criminal Convention and later the UN Convention against Corruption. The strongest legislative initiative came in the year 2016. A specific law (No. 95/2016) set up the institutions tasked to fight corruption and organized crime, while Law No. 60/2016 created protection for whistleblowers of cases. The purpose was to prevent and punish corruption, as well as to encourage the denunciation of suspicious practices. However, experts emphasize that the whistleblower law has found very little application in practice. In many cases, protection from retaliation remains simply symbolic; employees who thought they were protected quickly discovered that they had no real chance to save their careers. This gap between papers and reality appears clearly in the region as well. In the 2024 index for the Western Balkans, Albania ranked third, leaving behind Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and North Macedonia, while Montenegro remains the least corrupt, followed by Kosovo. The improvement is tangible, but the steps are slow.
The Cases: Two Universities Under the Microscope of Justice
Agricultural University of Tirana
On October 21, 2022, the Special Prosecution Office (SPAK) registered a criminal proceeding for abuses with tenders at the Agricultural University of Tirana. Using special investigation methods, prosecutors discovered violations in several procurement procedures during the year 2022, with a total value of around 90 million lek. According to the file, academic-level officials manipulated documents and tender specifications in full cooperation with the competing businesses. The scheme was clear: preferred companies were favored by manipulating bids, deleting information, and inflating the budget ceiling without any genuine market study. SPAK raised charges for violation of equality in tenders and passive and active corruption. The blow was massive: arrest in prison was requested for five suspects, house arrest for ten others, and obligation to appear for nine people. Those implicated were administrators, directors, specialists, and professors. What stands out? Not a single line, not a single public announcement appeared on the official website of the university about this scandal.
“Aleksandër Xhuvani” University, Elbasan
Another scandal erupted at the University of Elbasan, in the Faculty of the Lower Cycle. On November 1, 2024, the Prosecution of Elbasan registered a proceeding for abuse of duty and passive corruption. The proceeding began from the complaint of a citizen and from a television chronicle that showed how a student was asked for money by a middleman to pass the autumn exams. Investigators seized cash, exam documents, wiretaps, and interrogated students. The evidence revealed that professors demanded from 150 to 500 euros for a passing grade, using middlemen to maintain contact with students. Even the husband of one of the arrested female professors is suspected of playing the role of the middleman. The Court of Elbasan released the arrested professors with an “obligation to appear” and suspended them from duty, while the file was passed to SPAK. (According to the law, every individual is presumed innocent until his guilt is proven by the court). The question that arises after these two cases is one and only:
Do Universities Have Internal Anti-Corruption Mechanisms?
To understand if universities can clean their own yard, all public universities in the country were monitored. In fact, the panorama is the same and highly disturbing.
University of Tirana: No anti-corruption mechanism appears on the official website of the university. The internal regulation does not have a single line for cases on how a student should act if they ask him for a bribe, if they force him to buy the professor’s book, or ask him for money for a grade. A regulation for whistleblowers exists, but this is simply a national legal obligation, not a genuine anti-corruption filter of the university.
Faculty of Social Sciences (UT): A professor there confirmed that the only solution if you witness a case of corruption is “to complain to the head of department or the dean”. There is no coordinator dealing with anti-corruption issues in this faculty. Nothing written exists. The professor emphasized that the lack of these mechanisms, combined with the normalization of corruption, makes the anti-corruption battle almost impossible, practically a lost cause. Students remain silent out of fear of consequences, he claimed.
University of Durrës: The professors of this university speak of a “culture of fatalism”. Students rarely demand their rights because they do not believe they can change anything. The code of ethics exists, but it is not transparent nor is it enforced with rigor.
“Aleksandër Moisiu” University (Durrës): Sources from the institution say that this university offers confidential reporting and uses the government platform “Stop Corruption”. But currently, there is no dedicated coordinator for integrity there, although there are plans for the future.
University of Vlora: In this institution, there is no specific procedure for reporting bribery, with the reasoning that “this is the job of the police and the prosecution”. The university prides itself that 90% of the exams are written, which reduces abuses, but it has no anti-corruption coordinator and there has been no official denunciation to this day.
University of Elbasan: It has a unit for whistleblowers with two employees and a code of ethics, but the staff is not given any training on integrity. As a professor of this university points out, cases of corruption come out from the media and not from official channels, because of the culture of informality and impunity.
The conclusion is clear: The majority of universities use the whistleblower law as an alibi to say that they have anti-corruption mechanisms. Integrity coordinators are nonexistent, trainings are missing, and scandals burst only thanks to journalists and prosecutors.
A Perspective from the Bottom-Up; Corruption as a Form of Totalitarianism
Edison Lika, an activist from the organization “Social Justice”, elaborates on the highly sensitive problem of the fight against corruption from the perspective of students. He recalls the protests of the year 2018: “Students had no idea where they had to report corruption, so they moved into student vigilantism [self-judgment] with petitions and boycotts, he recalls. Lika shows a flagrant case: professors forced students to buy their books by keeping nominal lists (an open blackmail for the exam). Students complained to the dean, who confronted the parties and the professor was dismissed. This case proves that pressure works, but unfortunately, everything depends on the individual courage of the student and not on a protective system of the university, claims activist Lika. “Corruption in Albania is so rooted, that it resembles a new form of totalitarianism”, he adds.
What Can We Learn from the Region?
Countries of the region show us that solutions to fight corruption in university lecture halls exist. The University of Korça, after the protests, built channels for anonymous reporting, an ethics commission with five members, and installed “Clean Score”, an American system that corrects exams digitally to avoid abuses by professors. In Kosovo, with the help of the Council of Europe, universities have drafted ethical standards and digital tools like chatbots to help students report. Montenegro is emphasizing preventative trainings. These are not simply articles on a paper, but living structures that are applied every day.
Albanian public universities are living between two worlds. On one hand, SPAK is showing that it does not hesitate to strike, from million-dollar tenders in Tirana to the selling of grades in Elbasan. But on the other hand, within the walls of universities, students are unprotected. Mechanisms are missing and their fate is left in the hands of a culture that teaches them to remain silent. Unfortunately, the files that end up in court are only the tip of the iceberg. To heal this wound, universities must build true reporting channels, appoint specific staff for integrity, and introduce technology in the evaluation of students. Until then, the price of a grade will continue to be bargained in silence, through corridors and cafes, far from the eye of the law.
Graciano Malaj
Note on the author: Graciano Malaj is a journalism student who is pursuing postgraduate studies in Tirana.
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