North Macedonia’s first IT college and edutech company Brainster Next is making an investment of €2.5M over the next 5 years in an effort to provide accessible and quality higher education in information science for future students in the country.
The project called “Study now, pay after employment!”, is an alternative model of financing whose primary goal is the most capable students, regardless of their financial capabilities, the company explained. Founded in 2015 as an educational center, Brainster aims to inspire the new generation to future-proof their career with in-demand tech skills.
The program will allow these students to get opportunities for top applied education that will lead to secure employment and future careers in the IT industry.
“The main motive behind this investment at Brainster Next College and the start of this project is to help take away the primary concern of students and their parents when deciding to study – and that is finance. This factor in the choice of institution and field of study is the one that most often distracts students from reaching for quality and advanced programs,” Brainster Next’s CEO Aleksandar Klashninovski tells The Recursive.
The project, which is first of its kind in the country implemented by a private IT academy, offers a chance to all graduates and young people to enroll in undergraduate studies in software engineering and innovation at Brainster Next College and to spend 3 years studying without financial burden and with zero costs until they graduate or are employed.
“At the same time, this is the only concept of financial benefit for students that is not based on rankings and calculations for past work (grades from high school and the results of passing the state graduation exam) but on the contrary, their competencies, abilities, affinities and desire to achieve more and progress,” Klashninovski added.
The program is scheduled to begin at the end of April, when Brainster Next will launch the qualification tests for competencies and abilities of students that want to enroll, and all other details about the project will be announced in the upcoming period.
Investments in IT education across the region are picking up
Investments in IT education are also picking up elsewhere in the region. In Croatia, the Algebra University College opened a new campus in the capital of Zagreb worth more than €14.5M.
By 2026 the Algebra’s new campus should have almost 70 percent more students, 2,300 of them, including 500 students from abroad. The students will have opportunities to study in 35 lecture halls, equipped with almost 700 computers, laser projectors, and audio equipment.
For participants in the training program, Algebra has accredited a special international test center for accessing various certificates such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, PMI, TOEFL and others.
“Our development strategy is based on strong internationalization and creating the preconditions for Algebra to soon be successfully transformed into a university and become a significant educational institution with programs run in digital and hybrid formats,” Tomislav Dominiković, CEO of Algebra Group, told Croatian media.
“Over the next four years we will maintain agility in education and a leading business school, and we intend to remain a reliable support for companies looking for talented staff and an important partner of Croatian technological unicorns “, Dominiković emphasized.
