Klaus attacks education reform opponents

Prague, Jan 24 (CTK) - Critics of the Czech university system reform, now under preparation, are playing a false game of academic freedom, President Vaclav Klaus said yesterday, adding that he feels indignant at academics' reaction to the Education Ministry's reform proposals.

The Czech university system urgently needs to be reformed, Klaus said on Czech Radio.

A part of students and university teachers fear that the changes envisaged by Education Minister Josef Dobes (Public Affairs, VV) will restrict academic freedoms and enhance the influence of politics and business on science.

At a meeting with universities' rectors yesterday, Dobes promised to further discuss the reforms with them. They established a joint working group that will meet in early February for the first time.

On Monday, a meeting of Dobes and the rectors was a failure. Many rectors expected yesterday's talks to solve the draft reform's controversial points.

The rectors said they do not reject a reform but want the powers of university bodies, i.e. the rector, administrative board and academic senate, to be balanced.

The rectors also seek a law to enable universities to work for the benefit of education and research, Czech Rectors' Conference deputy chairman Vladimir Vecerek said yesterday.

He said Dobes's promise of further negotiations does not automatically guarantee the reform's desirable outcome.

Dobes said he wants all participants in the debate to acquaint themselves with the updated version of the draft reform legislation. He said the latest version includes some provisions previously proposed by universities.

Dobes said he believes that "lack of information bordering on disinformation" are behind academics and students' protests against the planned reform.

Klaus, who also supported Dobes on some other occasions in the past, said in his interview on Czech Radio that he would like "to remind some of our great academics that the discussion does not concern private schools but public ones. If private universities were in question, where students pay tuition fees, then may the academics have the right to decide according to their consideration. However, their campaign is a false game of academic freedom," Klaus said.

As the university system is subsidised from public money, the state must have the right to decide or co-decide on it, he added.

Klaus said the academics must decide and not base their struggle on several objectives that contradict each other.

"They cannot struggle against [the introduction of] tuition fees and, at the same time, be seeking maximal academic freedom and the right to fully decide on universities. If the universities long for a total independence from the state, they should naturally also seek independence from taxpayers' money," Klaus said.

He said the university system produces neither high-level education nor science. The only thing the universities seek is a growing number of students and more academic titles for their teachers, Klaus said.

Charles University rector Vaclav Hampl said Klaus' words show that he does not understand the position of universities.

"I can hardly believe that some parts of [Klaus's] statements were really pronounced by the president in this way," Hampl said in an interview on Impuls Radio.

He said Klaus's statements, generalising and lumping everything together, were "quite an incomprehensible step."

Rectors' matter-of-fact objections are far from refusing the reform completely, Hampl emphasised.

On Monday, Dobes was supported by Prime Minister Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS), who called the universities' reaction inappropriate in view of the fact that the reform bills are only being drafted and a debate on them is yet to come.

Some yesterday expected Dobes to make an appointment with Hampl, whom he recently asked to explain why he "has fomented social unrest." Dobes was reacting to an academic rally Charles University held in protest against the draft reform legislation presented by Dobes. No date of a Dobes-Hampl meeting was set yesterday, however.

The centre-right government vowed to introduce a university system reform when it came to power in mid-2010.

Last year, Dobes presented the aims of the planned two bills, on universities and on financial support to students, that are to be discussed by the cabinet soon. The former bill modifies the operation of universities and introduces tuition fees, the latter deals with savings and loans for education purposes.

Both bills have been opposed by the Czech Conference of Rectors and by the Council of Universities, as well as the unions and the opposition parties.