Abstract

The paper analyzes the implementation of the “Bologna reform” of higher education in the Republic of Serbia during the last fifteen years. Emphasizing neoliberalism as the ideological basis of the reform, the authors subjected the reform to a critical analysis of its normative goals and achieved achievements. The authors conclude that the restructuring of universities based on market principles and their transformation into for-profit organizations leads to the gradual collapse of the basic function of a modern university embodied in the search for truth and the production of knowledge. Contrary to the proclaimed “knowledge society”, the reform led to the lowering of scientific and educational standards and the neglect of immediately inapplicable knowledge, which completely changed the social evaluation of knowledge and science and resulted in the establishment of a “society of ignorance”.