Belgrade University's Fall on Shanghai List: Authorities Blame Blockades, Professors Say Science Has Been Neglected for Years

The University of Belgrade has dropped out of the top 500 universities globally in the latest Shanghai Ranking for 2026, a decline that has sparked a debate between government officials and university professors regarding the causes.

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I am sorry that politician Đokić had to destroy the University of Belgrade so that the citizens of Serbia could see in black and white what the blockers and he have done to our society and what they would do to Serbia. After the blockers, not a stone remains.

Government representatives, including the President of the National Assembly Ana Brnabić, attribute the fall primarily to student blockades that occurred last year. Brnabić stated that these blockades, along with the actions of Rector Vladan Đokić, have damaged the university and Serbian society. She suggested that the blockades left "stone upon stone" of the university's standing.

However, professors argue that the ranking's main criteria, scientific contribution, has been hampered by systemic neglect of science funding over many years. Vladimir Obradović, a professor at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences currently at Harvard, explained that publishing a single scientific paper can cost thousands of euros, a cost not covered by available state funds in Serbia. "These funds do not exist," he said, pointing out that this lack of financial support directly impacts the university's ranking.

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To publish one paper on the SSCI list, one scientific paper, you often need two, three, or sometimes even more than a thousand euros to simply pay the cost of publishing that paper. This is not a luxury, it is a fact in modern science. In Serbia, these funds do not exist. Where will researchers pay for that? There are no such funds, and the university is ranked by that.

Adding to the challenges, a government decree from March of the previous year limited professors' research time to just five hours per week, down from twenty. Professors like Dušan Veljković from the Faculty of Chemistry believe this decree was a retaliatory measure against faculty who did not pressure students during the protests. He described it as the government "forbidding us to work" on research, leading to the current negative outcomes reflected in the ranking.

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That decree was made to take revenge on the faculty because they did not want to participate in pressuring students. And the consequence is that they have limited scientific work to practically one hour a day. Do you remember the story 'potatoes for the idle'? They forbade us to work by decree, at least that part related to scientific work, and now - this potato that was planted then has started to bear its first fruits.