Skopje, 2 January 2026 (MIA) – Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said Friday education would be one of the top priorities in 2026, noting that the number of scientific research papers will have to increase if the country’s universities want to rank among the top one thousand on the Shanghai Ranking.

“We cannot grow stronger as a nation and as a country without quality education and science. Because of that, we are raising the funds in support of scientific research projects. If in 2023 we began with Mden 340 million, in 2024 and 2025 we got close to the figure of Mden 680 million, and now for the coming year we have over Mden 770 million allocated precisely for this,” Mickoski told journalists during a visit to Kochani.

The Prime Minister said the figure is not sufficient, but it is much higher than the one the government inherited.

“I expect that in the years ahead, with the amendments to the Law on Higher Education, my colleagues who wish to build an academic career will need to write more scientific research papers that will be published in journals with an impact factor and included in the Thomson Reuters database. We conducted an analysis which shows that if we want to have a university ranked among the top thousand on the Shanghai Ranking, we must increase by between eight and ten times the number of scientific papers that, as a state and universities, we publish in impact-factor journals that are part of the Thomson Reuters database, also known as Web of Science,” Mickoski stressed.

Mickoski said with the latest raises, the wages of professors are fairly dignified, and that the focus should now be placed on science.