“Agreed, but only if you join the party” – that was the answer to a young architect in a Belgrade municipality who, immediately after graduation, came to inquire whether he can volunteer for a few months while looking for a job. Just to make it clear, this is not the case of someone who tried to enter the municipal bureaucracy in order to get any kind of job. This young man graduated with highest grades and, like the rest of the youth, has big plans and dreams. He went to the municipality last year, he still has no job and it is certain that his optimism and enthusiasm now have to be at least undermined.
The first lesson he learned in the world he got himself educated for is that degree and knowledge do not have such a great value. He has a lot of reasons to believe that a society in which he lives is based on party affiliation or party protection without which one cannot achieve anything significant. After all, in their campaigns, the parties openly offer to voters the repairing and building of roads, water supplies and the rest, only if they vote for them. And these purposes are not financed from parties’ funds, but with taxpayers’ money, that is, all citizens of Serbia.
Of course, Serbia is a country of market economy and our volunteer can look for a job in a private company. But, it is a possibility that will be really hard to implement because the Serbian construction business is going down the hill and there is no need for young architects, not even for the ones with top grades. The economy is more often forced to lay people off than to employ them. Preoccupied with day-to-day survival, the companies do not have time to seriously deal with the creative staff without whom there is no future.
The relationship between the employees in Belgrade municipality who asked a graduate with highest grades to join the political party in order to be allowed to volunteer and state of our economy is essential. They are the outcome of the system that has been developed for years in which rules are not designed to allow a chance for the talented and educated, but to those who are “our people.” The priority objective of this system is not to create conditions for economic progress or any other development, but to satisfy the needs and interests of those who make up the system.
In short, the lack of jobs for highly educated people and professionals is the result of the fall in economic activity, but is more a political issue. If the unlucky volunteer from the beginning of this story had received any kind of understanding in Belgrade municipality, instead of an invitation to join a party, if the officials had showed concern for the fact that the territory of their municipality does not have room for graduates with highest grades, maybe his perspective would not look so dark.
However, it turned out that in practice the system and its “components” do not even feel the need to pretend that the common interest of citizens is their main aspiration. More and more often, they openly display their own interests and the interests of their parties. In the so-called higher levels and in the public appearances of parties’ and other officials things look better, and the situation is certainly better in some of the municipalities, but that’s little comfort to the army of young people who will graduate in the near future.
The young man who graduated with the highest marks and cannot even obtain the volunteer status will certainly not stay in Serbia to wait for his chance for years. He and people like him will be the main “targets” of developed European countries, which, like Germany, show more willingness to liberalize the “import” of experts. These countries will not ask them for any party or national origin, they will only be interested in the knowledge these young people have.
It would be wrong to say that Germany and other countries can act this way because of their powerful economies. On the contrary, their economy is powerful because they implement such policies centered on an attempt to employ the most skilled, educated and talented people in order to develop and create new values. Therefore, we should first change the policy or the system based on the promotion of “our people”. This does not require any financial investments and benefit is huge.