BRATISLAVA, July 6, (WEBNOVINY) — The Ministry of Education is calling for a change in state research and development policy. It submitted an update to the Cabinet on Wednesday of long-term objectives of the State Research and Development Policy through 2015, called Phoenix, based upon which it hopes to draft an amendment on the organization of state support for R&D. The Cabinet endorsed this document with some comments.
According to the proposal of Minister Eugen Jurzyca (SDKU-DS), future financing should be based upon the same principles for all public and state universities and other public research organizations, as well as state and private higher education institutions. Also, there should be a combination of long and short term financing. In long-term financing, universities and other state and public research organizations are to receive money based upon the results of periodic evaluations of their achievements, to be evaluated using the British RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) system. Assessments should also be conducted in six-year intervals.
Further, short-term financing is to be adjusted each year in budget chapters. The Education Ministry recommends that schools receive annual funding based upon selected performance criteria evaluated from the previous three years, such as publications, citations, grant success, application of concrete projects in practice, and outcomes or results of joint projects, in practice. Internal grant schemes may also be a part of short-term institutional funding. In the education sector, it could be VEGA, KEGA schemes, while other departments may, if they have none, establish their internal grant programs.
A transition period will precede the full deployment of institutional funding in the proposed form. During this period, a part of the overall financial package for schools, the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and departmental research institutes, will be allocated based upon current rules and the remainder on the basis of periodic evaluations. The same pot of money should go to purpose-bound and institutional financing, along with short and long-term financing. The reason for this measure, noted officials, is that the new system motivates competitiveness. The agency to support research and development, which currently distributes grants only from the state budget, should also undergo changes.
The Education Ministry points out that developing the social and economic level of Slovakia can only be accomplished using the necessary knowledge that cannot be imported indefinitely. Slovakia is bringing in knowledge from abroad in the form of imported goods, from cars through machines, technology to medicine and managerial know-how. „The long-term reliance on imports of knowledge, without a focused effort to develop human resources and to contribute actively to global knowledge, contains a number of risks and this path would ultimately lead to negative development,“ said the Ministry of Education in the material. If Slovakia continued this policy, it may lose the quality of human resources, the ability to apply knowledge in practice, and also, in the future, could struggle with the inability to solve specific problems faced by Slovakia.
According to the department, the state must provide support for research and development. By doing so, it will educate professionals for itself, whereby it will be in a better position to keep them in the country. Also, applied research and innovations should contribute to economic development, according to the Ministry of Education. The department believes that changes in support for research and development policy will also help resolve specific problems in Slovak society. Doctoral graduate study and direct involvement in research and development activities are essential for educating superior experts. Therefore, the department proposes support for doctoral programs, with particular emphasis on the promotion of joint PhD programs in English, support for post-doctoral programs and the intensive use of domestic and international mobility for students and researchers. The department sees one of the solutions in the reform of career plans in higher education, which should enable promoting high-quality local and foreign professionals under certain conditions.
SITA