If a higher education institution wishes to join an existing CEEPUS network, it should contact the network coordinator to ask if this is possible.
A Letter of Endorsement must be submitted as part of the application process, signed by the rector or a vice-rector, certifying that students from other institutions participating in a CEEPUS network will be exempted from tuition fees. Another document to be submitted is a Letter of Intent, which guarantees full recognition of the study period at another CEEPUS educational institution for outgoing students. This document should be signed by an authorised person for mutual recognition for each participating faculty. A description of the study programme in English with information on ECTS credits must also be provided.
A network is registered on the ceepus.info home page. The professor/lecturer registering their unit registers the Network role and fills in the required information. The application is then approved by the National CEEPUS Office. Afterwards, the network coordinator can add the proposed unit to the CEEPUS network he/she coordinates.
The same procedure should be followed when registering a new network as the network coordinator, with at least two institutions having related programmes already selected as partners in that network. If an institution wishes to coordinate the work of a network, prior experience as participants in the programme is recommended.
Networks that are active in the current academic year do not need to submit new documents to participate in the following academic year, unless they want to involve new partners. On the other hand, networks applying after one or more years of inactivity must follow the same application procedure as new networks in terms of document submission.
Networks that fail to submit the necessary documents to the ceepus.info website by the deadline on 15 January are automatically deleted, whereas networks with inadequate or incomplete documentation are subject to a deduction of points by the Central CEEPUS Office. After the networks registration deadline, the National CEEPUS Office evaluates the documents of all networks coordinated by institutions from Serbia.
Submission of additional documents, if required, is followed by the National Commission‘s evaluation of the networks in which their country‘s institutions participate as coordinator or partner. Experts evaluate the networks based on the guidelines of the Central and National CEEPUS Offices, awarding them a certain number of points. The focus here is also on the coherence of the programme, the way each partner contributes to the quality of the programme, and the innovation of the approaches used. The publication of the ranking list is due in March, when the Central CEEPUS Office decides on the number of networks to be approved for the following academic year. In addition to the approved networks, some networks will be on a reserve list (umbrella networks), which do not receive scholarship months but are entitled to use the unused scholarship months in a given academic year. At the very end of this process, the International Commission distributes the total national quota among the approved networks.
