NP Krka is another one of those ''must visit'' places when in Croatia, and yes, there are many such destinations to be found here. The whole ''must see'' thing has become a little saturated over recent years, especially with the rise of self-proclaimed travel bloggers and social media influencers, however, there is much more to this stunning national park than just the ability to take artistic Instagram pictures.

NP Krka is involving itself in the education of school children in the Dalmatian county in which the park is situated through a praiseworthy project aimed at increasing kids' overall awareness of both protected areas and nature and the environment.

As Morski writes on the 3rd of April, 2019, the highly visited NP Krka actually launched the project "Let's fill up the school libraries" (Popunimo školske knjižnice), for primary and secondary schools of the Šibenik-Knin County back in 2007.

The aim of the project is to make the books published within the framework of this educational scope available to school-age children and other young people, so that they can contribute to their own respective awareness of the country's numerous protected areas and the need to take care of their surroundings, including the importance of the proper preservation of the environment.

Since back in 2007, VHS tapes and later on, DVDs covering a wide array of topics related to NP Krka and its environment and native wildlife and birds have been shared around numerous local schools within the aforementioned county in Dalmatia. In February this year, a total of 49 books were distributed to thirty-six primary and thirteen high schools in the county.

NP Krka's administration and staff believe that this year's gift to local schools will be used by students and their mentors and teachers not only as an additional teaching aid for the classroom but that it will also encourage children to go out and get to know and further explore the rich natural beauty and the cultural heritage of the beautiful NP Krka.

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As Morski writes on the 28th of March, 2019, this weekend, the island of Murter will host the first of two sets of field work of Zagreb veterinary students within the "Blue Project - Contribution to the development of the DKU Program at VFZS" project, carried out by the Argonaut association in partnership with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Zagreb, as well as the Pula Marine Education Centre.

The implementation of the project started back in April 2018, and the purpose of the project is to give the Zagreb veterinary students a chance to engage in socially beneficial marine environment conservation projects. Through the projects within the classes, and in cooperation with various civil society organisations, students will learn to properly identify the needs of the community and through the courses they undertake, develop potential solutions - projects that will see them engaged in the local community, according to a report from SibenikIN.

Within this concrete project, the topics that are likely among the most interesting to the Zagreb veterinary students will be the methods and ways of monitoring populations and providing treatment to the Adriatic's protected marine animals, such as sea turtles and dolphins.

In addition to Murter, students will also visit Pula and the Marine Education Center at the Pula Aquarium in mid-April this year.

Students will develop their projects through selected mentoring programs which include but aren't limited to visiting habitats during the winter months and learning how to properly aid a sea turtle who has become too cold, learning about the friendly behaviour of sea turtles and dolphins, what to do when coming across a sick or injured dolphin or sea turtle, and what the procedure is should a dead dolphin or sea turtle be discovered.

At the workshop in Murter, the thematic workshop will focus on dolphins and students will be educated on the development of monitoring protocols, recording the occurrence of protected marine animals - dates, times, geographical positions, the number of animals, their ages, their conditions and the level of potential human impact (maritime traffic, tourism and fishing), as well as the basics of photographing these types of protected marine species.

The project aimed at the Zagreb veterinary students and their further education will go on for eighteen months, more specifically until October 2019, and is co-financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) in the amount of 854,018,21 kuna, with a total value of 1,004,727.31 kuna. The project leader is the Argonaut association from Murter, and the partners of the project are the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Zagreb and the Pula Marine Centre. The project is being implemented in the area of Šibenik-Knin County, Zagrebačka, and Istria County.

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Click here for the original article by SibenikIN

Far from the calm yet rugged shores of Dalmatia in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, Dalmatian students are set to showcase Dalmatia's rich history with traditional klapa singing at the seventh student klapa festival.

As Gordana Igrec/Morski writes on the 16th of March, 2019, Klapa music can be heard up and down the Dalmatian coast and is an intrisic part of Dalmatian culture. From Dubrovnik and the extreme south of Dalmatia up to northern Dalmatia, many different groups exist from area to area and from city to city.

The word klapa means ''group of friends'' and this type of a cappella singing, which focuses mainly on romance and love, as well as on the sea and various parts of Dalmatia, traces its long roots back to littoral church singing.

The seventh festival of student klapa organised by the Split students' association will be held on March the 23rd, 2019, at the Student Center in Zagreb (Studentski centar, Savska 25), starting at 20:30.

For the seventh year in a row, the festival offers students the opportunity to be part of a traditional and cultural event which works to present the richness of Dalmatian musical heritage to the public and to continental Croatia. All those interested in this type of music are invited to come and showcase their talents and present Zagreb with one of the most influential and recognisable symbols of Dalmatia - klapa singing. There's still time to register.

When one walks the usually busy streets of the very central European City of Zagreb, the sights and sounds of Dalmatia appear a world away. Owing to this festival, the capital will become a hub for the sounds of the city's resident Dalmatian youth, as it has been in previous years.

In this way, Dalmatian students are able to freely continue to cultivate their klapa singing traditions and their culture away from their coastal homes, and further  enrich the continental Croatian City of Zagreb, where they have come to study and work, and where many will remain permanently.

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Click here for the original article by Gordana Igrec for Morski

As Goran Jungvirth/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 24th of February, 2019, just like in the case of many other industries and categories of workers across the Republic of Croatia, the student population also poses a major challenge to employers when it comes to hiring employees, which is why new web portals and applications are being launched with a view to better connecting the supply and demand markets.

At the end of October 2018, a new law on Student Affairs was finally adopted in Croatian Parliament, with the aim of introducing changes that should provide more ease and significantly better conditions for the country's many students.

The move foresaw that the payment of a contractual fee be guaranteed within fifteen days, the introduction of a digital system was introduced, minimum times and their various accompanying payments were introduced, with an increase for working on Sundays, as well as for working at night and during holidays, as well as some other more than welcome student benefits.

Legislators made the changes justified by the desire to put an end to the exploitation of Croatia's students as little more than cheap labour for greedy employers in numerous different sectors.

Out of about 160,000 students in the Republic of Croatia, about thirty percent are extraordinary students, therefore it is expected that they will also work on student contracts, further strengthen the market for the country's potential student workforce, and more easily meet the needs of the demand market and of their respective employers.

However, it seems that such ''high-quality'' students are hard to come by and all but unavailable, because they're either simply not interested or they're already engaged in some sort of other work.

Labour market agents only noted the initial higher response of these so-called extraordinary students after they too were permitted to work through student contracts, but that situation, like many others, soon became a ''lethargic'' one.

"The problem is also a student's time and availability is limited to their university commitments, and employers of course want the same commitment as full-time employees, but students naturally don't want to lose their often beneficial student rights," stated Saša Jurković of Jazavac's management, an application which seeks to better connect students and their would-be employers.

"Jazavac was created to allow students to find work faster and for employers to reach students as quickly as possible through matching and merge apps," said Jurković when speaking about the project which has been co-financed by the European Union via the European Regional Development Fund.

In addition to increasing immigration and the concerning and accelerated departure of young people from Croatia seeking (among other things) better economic conditions elsewhere, statistics also show a worrying and fairly intensive decrease in the total number of people studying in Croatia at all.

Despite the increasing number of private faculties, polytechnics and colleges across the country, in the last five years alone, the number of students has decreased by more than fifteen percent. Additionally, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics for the academic year 2012/2013, there were 188,285 students actively studying in a facility in the Republic of Croatia, which is nearly 30,000 more than there are currently.

In order to maintain the dynamics of the market between students and employers, it's necessary for them to not only be better connected, but to be more informed in general.

"For now, we have over 900 undergraduate students and over 100 employers who use the search engine and periodically publish their ads. We're growing quickly but we need more students and companies and want to connect with the Student Center (SC) to help them be even more successful. As the oldest source of student affairs, SC has not achieved satisfactory results for a long time for those students who require employers, so employers are forced to use different social networks, portals and pages to find students,'' Jurković described the issue, giving an example of how to create a much better connection between students and their potential employers.

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Click here for the original article by Goran Jungvirth for Poslovni Dnevnik

As of 2016/17, there were 770 Croatian students attending university in the United Kingdom, a figure which is over three times higher than three years before when just 255 Croats were studying in the United Kingdom.

Despite the fact that the international application and enrollment load has been flattened in recent years when it comes to the UK’s higher education system, the number of talented foreign students willing to get a British degree remains high. Moreover, there are students coming from particular countries who, over the past few years have intensified their presence within British universities.

Shedding light on official statistics, Studying-in-UK.org revealed that Croatian students are in that category. Following their country’s accession to the European Union back in 2013, the number of Croatian students attending UK universities increased largely on a year-on-year basis.

According to these statistics, last year, British universities were home to 770 Croatian citizens, which, when compared to three years previously, was more than three times higher.

Statistics from 2013/14, on the other hand, show that during that year there were 255 Croatians enrolled in UK universities. Moreover, in the previous year, there was not a single Croatian citizen studying in the UK.

Universities in England are home to the majority of these students. Out of 770 Croatian students in the UK, 645 of them were attending an English university as opposed to 85 students in Scotland, and 40 students in Wales. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, there were only five Croatian students attending university who were enrolled during the 2015/16 academic year.

The number of Croatian students in British universities by constituent country (Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales) over the past several years is shown on the table below for the time period 2013/14 – 2016/17.

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An absolutely incredible achievement for the Croatian aviation student team of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Shipbuilding has been secured with their outstanding success at an international competition organised by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronauts (AIAA).

Croatia may not have many inhabitants, and with the number worryingly dwindling day by day with the mass emigration of the population to pastures new, there might not be a lot to smile about for many. Despite this, this small country with a population numbering just a few million continues to breed some of the most impressive and talented people across all fields, from sport to technology and innovation, to cuisine.

As Vijesti.rtl.hr writes on the 3rd of December, 2018, the ten-member team came first place in the category of team projects by graduate students. Srednja.hr reports that their next goal is to present the project to all interested parties in order to popularise the faculty and that particular field of study.

The Croatian aviation student team consists of Fran Delić, Tibor Gašparac, Antonio Golub, Antonio Jurišić, Antonio Klasnić, Ivan Kovačević, Matea Lišnić, Kristijan Ruklić, and Vjekoslav Sraga, and all of them participated in the construction of the best project under the watchful eyes of their mentors dr. sc. Milan Vrdoljak and doc. dr. sc. Pero Prebeg.

Within the conceptual design of the aircraft, they formed their main parts such as the wings, the body, the chassis and drive, in accordance with the goals they set themselves as well as the requirements of the MIL standard and the project task.

Their impressive victory is a huge success in the global context, as the competition is announced by the largest aviation organisation with more than 80,000 members and which publishes dozens of professional aviation magazines. From the Croatian perspective, the team's success is an even greater one.

Except for the aforementioned Croatian aviation student team, only two other teams from Europe won at this competition - and they were teams from the prestigious universities of TU Delft and the Polytechnique University of Milan in Italy.

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All foreign students studying in Trieste, and there are very many of them, have the right to access grants.

Life can be very difficult for many, but it doesn't have to be.

More Croatian innovation, this time directly from a student in the Dalmatian capital.

OTP Splitska banka is helping make life a bit easier for less well off students with a welcome financial donation.