Prague, Nov 20 (CTK) – The annual budget of Czech universities and colleges should rise to 30 billion crowns as of 2020, Czech Rectors’ Conference deputy chairman Mikulas Bek, rector of Brno’s Masaryk University, said in the Questions of Vaclav Moravec programme on public Czech TV yesterday.
At present, their budget is about 21 billion crowns a year. A similar budget level has been projected for the next three years as well.
Education Minister Katerina Valachova (Social Democrats, CSSD) said the universities’ budget could be increased. However, this will depend on whether the budget of the whole education sector will rise, she added.
The universities’ budget has long been in deficit, which is compensated by European subsidies, Bek said.
Finances for universities must be found somewhere since the flow of European money will be halted in three years, he added.
Valachova pointed out that so far the budget of universities was stabilised for the next three years at least.
It would be ideal if universities received 18 percent of the whole Education Ministry’s budget, she said.
“To achieve this, we would need an additional 4.5 billion crowns,” Valachova pointed out.
Next year, the Education Ministry will get 148 billion crowns without European money.
Valachova called the budget rise up to 30 billion, which Bek required, radical.
It is more realistic at the moment to negotiate about the rise from 21 to 26 billion crowns in the budget outlooks, she added.
However, Bek pointed out that finances for universities need not come from public sources only.
“I am of the view that the financial participation of students must be increased eventually and some enrolment fees or tuition must be introduced. This exists in many European countries though to a various extent,” Bek said.
He added that the future governments would have to return to this idea, otherwise the share of university students might dramatically decrease to 10 or 15 percent.
About a half of secondary school graduates continue at universities and colleges now.
At the beginning of this year, almost 327,000 people studied at universities and colleges in the Czech Republic with the population of 10.5 million. In 2015, more than 82,000 people graduated from universities and in 2014, it was more than 88,000.
($1=25.436 crowns)
hol/dr
