Academies Without Academic Studies

Higher vocational education is often overshadowed by academic education and flies under the radar of the general public, which still talks about 'higher schools' even though they have long ceased to exist in the local system. In the names of former higher schools in Serbia, since 2006, the term 'higher school of vocational studies' has been introduced and used, and since 2019, higher schools have been grouped into academies. While this process is ongoing, the terminological confusion arises because when academies are mentioned, the general public mostly doesn't think of vocational education first, but rather associates them with academies of science, like SANU (Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts), or art academies which are actually faculties, for example, fine arts or music arts. At the same time, tens of thousands of students acquire higher education at academies of vocational studies, not only in undergraduate but also in master's study programs. Official data from the Statistical Office of the Republic shows that out of the total number of current freshmen in all higher education institutions, state and private, nearly a quarter of current first-year undergraduate students opted for vocational education last year.