For nine years, Studentarija, an Instagram-based youth-led media outlet, has published daily information about student life in North Macedonia: from application deadlines and scholarships to public transport, accommodation, and higher education policies. But beyond providing information, it has increasingly become something else: A place where students feel safe enough to speak about problems they are unwilling to report elsewhere.
For years, the messages have arrived one after another.
A student who didn’t receive the government scholarship they were promised. Another describing cockroaches in their dormitory. Someone else reported that their subsidized student meal was suddenly terminated without explanation. A student convinced they were treated unfairly during an exam, but too afraid to speak publicly.
Most of these stories were never formally reported to the relevant institutions. Instead, they landed in Studentarija’s Instagram inbox. As thousands of messages accumulated over the years, one question became impossible to ignore: What if these individual stories could become evidence of systemic problems?
That question led to the creation of Digital Student Voice, an online platform that enables students across North Macedonia to anonymously report problems related to higher education and student life.
Rather than collecting complaints for their own sake, the platform aims to identify recurring patterns, document structural challenges, and transform scattered experiences into organized evidence that can inform public discussion and institutional action.
“Students trust Studentarija, and that is reflected in the large number of messages we receive every day,” says Goshe Nikolov, founder of Studentarija.
“While that trust is extremely high, we have also noticed that many students are afraid to speak publicly about the problems they face because they fear potential consequences. This became especially clear when a student dormitory in the city of Ohrid was left without electricity for more than 30 hours. Students informed us about the situation, but they were afraid of being identified and facing retaliation from the dormitory management, including the possibility of losing their accommodation.”
Fear of speaking openly is not unique to one institution. For many students, publicly criticizing university staff, dormitory administrators, or government institutions can feel risky, particularly in a relatively small academic community where anonymity is difficult to preserve.
Digital Student Voice was designed with that reality in mind.
Through a secure online form, students can anonymously report issues ranging from delays in scholarships and financial aid to deteriorating living conditions in student dormitories, violations of student rights, transportation problems, discrimination, or administrative obstacles during their studies.
The objective extends beyond simply collecting reports.
The platform seeks to create a structured database of student experiences, allowing recurring problems to be identified, categorized, and monitored over time. By doing so, isolated incidents become measurable trends rather than individual anecdotes.