TCN was there to celebrate the new campus opening on Wednesday. The impressive new Zagreb Algebra campus spans more than 12,000 square metres, making it the largest campus in the City of Zagreb and indeed in all of Croatia, worth 110 million kuna. That sum makes it the largest private investment made in a Croatian education institution yet.
The campus is located in Gradišćanska street, in the Črnomerec neighbourhood of Zagreb, close to their previous location. Almost 200 full-time employees will work in this modern and technologically up to date equipped space on several floors, 1,600 students will study and about 12,000 students will attend their many programmes annually. The plans for the future are quite ambitious, as they plan to enrol 70% more students by 2026, including 500 international students.
The new, modern campus includes everything a modern educational institution in the field of IT needs: in addition to the 35 lecture halls, equipped with almost 700 computers, laser projectors, and audio equipment. The lecture halls are named after famous Croatian inventors and scientists, such as Nikola Tesla, Faust Vrančić, Slavoljub Penkala, Ivan Vučetić etc. You can read more about them on Total Croatia. There are additional 14 studies exclusively for online education of the students anywhere in Croatia. There is a modern Art Room to help develop students’ creativity and audio-visual skills, as well as a video and audio studio and an innovation laboratory. An international testing centre was accredited where it will be possible to get various international certificates from providers such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, PMI, TOEFL, and others. Interestingly, the building of the new campus was designed to be as energy-efficient as possible, and all employees are encouraged to commute to work by bikes or scooters, and appropriate infrastructure for them is installed.
The three founders of Algebra, who are today members of the Management Board, Hrvoje Balen and Tomislav Dominiković, as well as Dean Mislav Bakalović, emphasised at the opening of the new campus that they are thus marking the 24th anniversary of Algebra (which has been around since back in 1998). They noted that this is a new professional chapter for them, in which they will strive to continue working so that people become better and bring greater competitiveness to the labour market.
In everything, said Balen, the cooperation and support of the business community, entrepreneurs and employers and what they need from education is important, but above all the commitment for students to do what they love and strive to become the very best at it. He said that it was important for the Republic of Croatia to create the proper and fair conditions for homegrown talent to remain in it, and their goal was to increase the number of foreign students in their programmes as well.
For more, check out our lifestyle section, or find out more about studying in Croatia in a Total Croatia article.