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Science in Serbia(self)

21ポイント22ポイント 投稿 myheklineによる

Hi, everyone. I work at a research lab in the US, and I recently met a woman who earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Belgrade before moving here for her PhD. I asked her what her time was like there and how the science education is like, and she says that it's very theoretical compared to here. The conversation quickly turned to DNA, but I was left curious.

Any chance somebody could give me a run-down of what science education is like in Serbia from high school through college through PhD programs? I'm also interested in admission, because she told me that there are applications for high school? How do PhD program admissions work, and how long does it take to finish? Just looking to compare and contrast.

Over here in the US:

You spend 4 years of high school picking your own classes. Each class awards you credits, and you need a certain amount of credits from every area of study to earn your high school degree. For example, you can graduate with 3 years of math (over 4 years of school).

In college, every degree has a set of requirements. For a biology degree, you pick classes that satisfy those general requirements (for example, molecular, physiology, etc) and that compliment their interests (so a student interested in microbiology can take a lot more microbiology courses than a student interested in virology). There are also specialized degrees that focus entirely on a specific area, like a degree in molecular genetics. Most courses have a hands-on lab portion, but it's arguably not very useful.

For PhD, in the sciences you don't pay tuition and the school gives you a salary of $28,000 a year, give or take. It takes about 5 years to complete, and leads to 3-6 years of a post-doctoral fellowship which is additional training after your PhD. It's very tough to find a job with a PhD in the sciences here, so a post-doc is almost always necessary. Students can and mostly do enroll into PhD programs right out of college. A master's degree is usually not helpful for PhD admission and work here.

Thanks!

全 21 件のコメント
knezmilos13Beograd 25ポイント26ポイント 7時間 前

High school is 4 years. You can't choose your classes freely, but different schools have different curriculums, some are specialized (electrotechnical school, medical school...), some are general (called "gymnazium"). Specialized schools have few study programs that have somewhat different classes (e.g. for electrotechnical school you have telecomunications, computers, energetics, multimedia...). You pick one when applying for highschool, before doing your entrance examination. Some study programs have stricter requirements, based on grades from elementary school (8 years, btw) and results of entrance examination. Once in highschool, there is (generally) no changing of study programs. Classes are fixed, as predetermined for your study program, and there are no credits, you must complete all classes.

After highschool, you can apply to a "higher" school, which encompasses three years, or to an university (4 years). I'll describe how it works at the Belgrade university since that's where I study, and it's also the largest one from the few we have. Anyway, the university is composed out of a number of faculties. Each faculty is completely independent from each other, and their facilities are dispersed all over the city. In order to be accepted into the faculty of your choice, your grades and entrance examination result are used (similar to highschool).

Faculties probably vary, but generally it is somewhat similar to highschool. There are study programs, and you pick one. At my faculty, the first year was identical for all students, and then you had to pick a study program in second year. After that, you had predetermined classes for your study program. There are some alternative classes you can choose (e.g. linear statistics vs decision theory), and some selective classes (4 of them in fourth year at my faculty) where you can pick them out of a few dozen available classes. I attended the Faculty of Organizational sciences which has study programs for management, information systems and technologies (my department), quality control and operational management.

How this all works "under the cover", and as a prelude to the PhD story (btw, did I mention I am a PhD student? I am a PhD student), is that there is a number of departments at each faculty. Each department has its own professors and assistants, and it's own set of classes. Since classes are mostly fixed, you'll eventually have some classes with every department. If you want to continue education after undergraduate studies, it's a good idea to pick selective classes with a department you're interested in. Also, in order to complete the undergraduate studies, you must write and defend a thesis. You go to a department of your choice and suggest or ask them for a topic you could do.

After undergraduate stduies come the master studies. Again, you generally do an entrance exam, although in some cases you can skip (if you completed your studies at the same faculty in four years with good grades). Master is neccessary if you want to do PhD and usually lasts one, perhaps two years at some faculties. Master studies can have similar study programs to undergraduate studies, but with additional, more specialized study programs offered by some departments or combinations of departments.

In my experience, master is rather crappy. At best, it's like another year of undergraduate studies, at worst, it's much easier and just a lightweight repeat of some undergraduate classes. Why is it so? Well, my faculty is somewhat well regarded, and students that completed undergraduate studies at other faculties (especially private ones) come over to get a masters diploma to gain some credibility. This is called "diploma washing". The result is that master classes are terribly low-level in order to allow students that don't know left from right to come over and pay tutition.

PhD studies are somewhat similar to master studies in regards to departments and available study programs. When applying, your undergraduate&master studies grades are used for ranking, and additional points are awarded for published papers (in national and international conferences, journals and monographies). My facuty takes in about 25-30 PhD students every year (for comparison, it also takes about ~900 undergraduate students).

Top ~4 students could study for free, at least until the year I was admitted :/, currently I think there are no free studies at all. Other faculties might differ, but most students likely pay. A year at my faculty costs about 240.000 dinars which is, according to google, ~2200 dollars. For comparison, average monthly pay seems to be around 400 dollars. PhD studies are three years long (more on that below), so this is very expensive. There are no student loans like I often read people complaining about on Reddit, so most PhD students are already employed (wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise), with their studies sometimes financed by their employer. Some students get free studies if they get a scolarship of the ministry of education. This scolarship requires you to work on one of the available "projects" and you get payed about ~300 dollars a month in addition to having free studies, which is nice. You must be officially unemployed to be eligible, though. Only a small number of PhD students get this scholarship. The projects are usually held by various departments, so you just apply to the project held by your department.

PhD studies are, at minimum, 3 years long. That is to say there are three distinct "year-units" of study, but I don't think most people manage to actually finish in three years. I don't know firsthand how is it after finsihing the PhD studies - I'm currently at my third year. My area of study is e-education and mobile education mainly, so there isn't much lab work included. I have to admit that I also don't feel very science-y (considering that your question is about science). I've done only one research during my three years, but I was lucky enough to get published in a journal on SCI list, which is a requirement for doing my thesis. I've done some practical work developing a mobile application, but most of my work is theoretical about applying various e-learning concepts in mobile environments. I believe a lot of other students do even less practical work, although I see some interesting stuff from time to time.

I'm not sure what a post-doctoral fellowship is, but I believe there is no such thing here. If you're on really good terms with your department, if you worked as a student-assistant (for free, of course), there is a possibility that they'll ask you if you want to stay as an assistant. Other than that, you're on your own. I don't know how much a PhD is actually valued here by employers. Might be weird since I'm a PhD student, but I posses a particular practical set of skills in web and Android development, so I probably won't use my diploma for much. I'm mostly going to take it just because I can, and then I'll put in on my wall or something and open a new account on Reddit called dr.knezmilos13.

If you're interested in anything else, ask, I'll be happy to answer.

And now I'll go and lie down because I literally got tired typing this thing out.

NebojsacSubotica 7ポイント8ポイント 5時間 前

I'm from Serbia and I still learned something about our science education. Good read.

anirdnas 3ポイント4ポイント 5時間 前

I am also a PhD student, and I don't know, I am not that satisfied, I certainly don't expect that it will pay off in career one day. Actually, I am hiding that fact from my employer. I pay the tuition myself. The whole system is pretty complicated and even though people are trying to do some "science" in Serbia, the problem is that all the quality and smart ones leave to work and study abroad, so... The PhD pays off if you work in academia or politics (but most politicians plagiarize their thesis).

coderqi 0ポイント1ポイント 4時間 前

Can you tell me how you're hiding the fact that you're doing a PhD from your employer? I mean, a PhD takes a lot of work to do, so how can you hide this effort?

anirdnas 0ポイント1ポイント 3時間 前

I have to some point flexible work hours, plus my workplace is close to university (10-15 minutes), so I can sneak in to consultations, and some of the professors are very understanding (they accept working on Saturday etc). Plus, I dont plan to finish this fast, it will probably take me 5 - 6 years (I am now on 2nd year).

operativac 10ポイント11ポイント 9時間 前

"there doesn't seem to be anything here"

coderqi 7ポイント8ポイント 8時間 前

Is the correct answer. I did a Computer Science PhD in Western Europe, and I must have read somewhere in the high hundreds to low thousands of papers. I've read papers from all over the world, but never one that came from a Serbian university/institution. Not to say there weren't any Serbian authors, just none from a Serbian institution.

Now, I've actually met a few programmers over here, most if not all were good, and interestingly, while many back in 'Western' Europe would have taken a few classes in ML, almost all of the programmers i've met here don't even know of the basic methods. I've met one guy who is very smart, and back home would probably be on a PhD programme, but he was just trying to get started in learning some of the 101 material in his own time.

While the work required to get a PhD varies between groups and between universities in the 'West', i'm not sure what professional guidelines are required on average here. I've met a few PhDs, and their lack of English and knowledge of basic terminology as relates to Academia and academic positions does make me doubt they had a requirement to publish internationally, though that's clearly not conclusive in anyway.

Now, here are some guesses and general observations:

  • I don't think there is much funding for research and the equipment needed in many fields, indicating they would most likely do more theoretical work than otherwise, out of necessity.

  • Yet, many of those in position to do theoretical work, such as math students at uni, have been/are offered the opportunity to switch to a computer science track so they can get work.

  • If you have a commercialisable skill within STEM, you're more likely to leave academia to make money instead of following a research career. E.g., programmers can make good money here, compared to the national average, so are naturally financially enticed to do so instead of pursuing research.

  • Anecdotally, i've heard of more people pursing PhDs in fields where they can't get work. Given the high unemployment rate here, the trend seems to be the continuation of studies in fields where there is low demand for work, which is the opposite of how funding works in the USA or Western Europe. Medicine is slightly different here, but again, the best practitioners of medicine aren't the ones i've heard of going into a research career. In fact, those doing research who have to do stints on a ward/operating theatre tend to be the worst at the actual practise of medicine. Again, this is anecdotal. Maybe i'm being unfair here though, as superficially this could be said of computer scientists and their skills at programming, but in my personal experience, the best programmers during uni went on to research. The rest, from bad to average, went on to work as programmers. That's the opposite here in Serbia.

  • Corruption and unprofessional behaviour permeates Serbian society. I've heard of people in certain fields getting on to research tracks due to nepotism, then leveraging their 'expert status' for paid work, meaning they spend little to no time doing research.

  • Naturally, people who are interested in having a genuine research career are more likely to try and do it abroad if they can.

  • Research in medicine seems to be different, but again seems to be based of relationships, and motivated by a desire for social status. Being motivated by social status is something i've seen everywhere, but it's a definitely a bigger factor here. But here, doctors seem to have a leg up over other fields wrt research, as they stay abreast, when it suits them, of international/European/EU guidelines, meaning their English is far better than most, so they do publish semi-internationally.

So, this doesn't really answer your question, and my intention isn't to piss off any locals on here, but these are my general observations.

EDIT: Seperated a bullet point into 2, and expanded on the second new bullet point.

SubutaiBahadurSubotica 5ポイント6ポイント 8時間 前

This is sadly true. In my field (Catalysis), there are several prominent Serbian authors, but all working in the US, Germany or Switzerland. I must say I never read a paper coming from a Serbian institution either. USA, Germany, Holland, Japan, China, Spain...even Hungary and Poland. Serbia? No. If I came across one I would do it just for the heck of it, but it doesn't seem like there are relevant papers coming from Serbia. I knew this, that's why I chose to do my PhD abroad. While on my Bachelor degree I went to one summer school in Germany, and saw the difference. I decided then and there,

Another problem is that Serbia is isolated academically. There isn't much of a flow of people. In western universities people are always coming and going, there are guest lecturers, international students, Erasmus. This is great for the Faculty, 'cause international staff bring in experience and novelty. While doing my BSc and MSc in Serbia I haven't met a single student or employee who was not from Serbia, Bosnia (the Serbian part only of course) or Montenegro.

EDIT: Sometimes I cannot english...

coderqi 5ポイント6ポイント 7時間 前

EDIT: Sometimes I cannot english...

I didn't even notice any bad English, apart from that very EDIT itself, of course ;)

ShinhanSubotica 2ポイント3ポイント 7時間 前

If you have a commercialisable skill within STEM, you're more likely to leave academia to make money instead of following a research career

This is a global phenomenon.

coderqi 0ポイント1ポイント 7時間 前

Sure. But more so here in Serbia. Funding for STEM is higher than that for the humanities in the USA/EU, whereas I would say it's non-existent here. Couple that with a good above average wage you can get here in a country with high unemployment, and you see the opposite of what I see back home; the best leave to work as programmers with very limited knowledge of ML and comp sci, in fact the very best get work before they finish there degree, some not even ever bothering too.

Now as I said that's the opposite of what i've seen back home in the EU. The best have the option to either get work or stay on in research. They usually stay on in research. Take my masters class. 15 out of 150 got what can be considered an A* grade (though that's not how we were graded). 2 went to work, the rest went in to research.

Ian_DessNiš 0ポイント1ポイント 5時間 前

what is ML m8? this?

coderqi 0ポイント1ポイント 5時間 前

Machine Learning, A.I., predictive statistics...

Ian_DessNiš 0ポイント1ポイント 5時間 前

i'm in the last year of college (bachelor? not really familiar with English educational terms) and we had a full course on A.I. here in Niš. that one was "preselected" meaning you have to take it. and there are few more "optional" courses on A.I. later on, on masters and phd.

SubutaiBahadurSubotica 2ポイント3ポイント 9時間 前

High school is four years. Yes, you do a test and a combination of the points from the test and your grades from elementary school determines which high school you get in. You can choose between a gymnasium (which gives you a more general education) or a vocational school. You don't get to pick your subjects, you must pass all of them.

At the University at your Bachelor degree most classes are mandatory, some you can choose. At the Master's you are more free, and you can pick most of your courses. There are specialized degrees such as in physical chemistry, biochemistry. At the Uni most courses have "practical" parts where you actually go to labs and do "exercises". The usefulness of these varies from course to course, or from professor to professor.

For PhD I cannot speak much 'cause I am doing it abroad, but I know you have to apply for a course and pay tuition, and then getting employed as a doctoral student is a completely separate process, i.e., you can be in graduate school without being employed, which is totally weird (and senseless, nobody does this of course).

What many people find strange is that in Serbia we have to have a defense for our degrees, even for Bachelor. A presentation, comity, audience, all that jazz...

EDIT: Added a sentence.

PepermintNSNovi Sad 2ポイント3ポイント 8時間 前

Also we take 14 classes through the whole year here in a Gymnasium

ilicstefan 0ポイント1ポイント たった今

Even though I did not enrolled in science I can tell you that everything is more theoretic.

They give you a huge book full of information, you are then required to memorize that book and repeat said information to them in the same way in which it was written.

There is not enough money in state budget for other activities (despite the fact that almost 50% of students pay for their tuition...) or professors simply refuse to update their teaching methods simply because that means more work for them. This way they only repeat things they already know and they don't have to put more effort into it.

School system in general is very outdated. Nobody checks if methods used give any progress or success.

People who actually want to go "over" usually upgrade their knowledge via internet or other ways and then they simply leave the country.

Another bad thing, employers only look at grades, nobody checks if that person really knows the stuff needed for the job, they blindly believe to a piece of paper. Most of them also look for someone who already has some work experience and rarely will someone hire you if you have no work experience.

How the hell are you supposed to have work experience when everyone is refusing you for not having one.

There you have it why is your friend in the US and not here.