The Role of International Standards on Higher Education

While Albania has in place the key structures of the education system, the past educational legislation and reforms were not sufficient to fully realise the institutions of higher education. The attempts to establish premium-quality universities and research institutions were continued with the New Law on Higher Education. However, the standards in higher education, particularly in terms of scientific research, are still not at a sufficient level; the country itself is facing serious social and economic challenges, and research programs are both small in scope and regionally fragmented. Over the last decade, the vocabulary of marketing has been applied to the field of education; nowadays, its scope includes several dimensions, all of them aimed to attracting new students. The research focused on the characteristics of a new conceptual model that describes the applications process for Albanian higher education. Namely, the main goals of the research were: to identify the role of new laws and regulations in the higher education system; to explore the effects of the application system on the students' point of view.