Researches of national and international organizations have shown that corruption in education in Montenegro is widely spread phenomenon. Grades are being bought and sold, papers plagiarized and cheating became a legitimate way to pass a test. Such practices are inducing students to think that the education system is based on money, rather than on knowledge, which might be an incentive for many to engage in corruption-related activities. Consequently, if this problem were not dealt with, corruption would become inherent to the system, and replicate itself, thus disallowing the democratic values to penetrate the core society.
Student Association of the Centre for Monitoring and Research CeMI and The Center for Civic Education have jointly started implementation of the project “Students’ Integrity Initiative” in June 2012. This project is supported by the Open Society Foundation from Budapest, with the general objective to contribute to decrease academic fraud practices at the University of Montenegro.
In duration of one year, this project will encompass a variety of activities: detailed research of forms and frequency of academic fraud at Montenegrin faculties, formulation of measures for suppression of academic fraud, inclusion of students in process of the fight against corruption through creation of the students’ integrity association at the University of Montenegro and awareness campaign in order to familiarize students with term “academic fraud” and its harmful consequences.