Gowin: Universities are beginning to adapt to changes in financing
In the coming year the new way of distribution of subsidies among universities will come into force. Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Science Jarosław Gowin said on Wednesday at a meeting of the Senate committee that higher education universities have already begun to adapt to these changes.
The new regulation the Minister of Science introduces changes in the distribution of statutory grants from the state budget among universities. The main objectives of the algorithm are to improve the quality of education, move away from mass approach, strengthen the research capacity and link the educational process to teaching - Deputy Minister of Science Teresa Czerwińska said at the committee meeting.
The new algorithm will reduce the effect of "inheritance" of grants from year to year. In addition, the algorithm will reward, among other things, maintaining the ratio of the number of students to the number of academic teachers at universities - 13 students per teacher. In addition, the grant will also be linked to the scientific category of each unit and the number of ongoing research projects. The regulation was signed on November 23 and will enter into force on 1 January 2017.
"We are already seeing in the reactions of various universities that the academic community is beginning to adapt to this algorithm. We observe these reactions with great interest, some of them are exactly what we wanted" - commented Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Science Jarosław Gowin.
He said that, for example, one of the rectors issued an instruction to remove from the list of students all the so-called "eternal students", that is - as the minister commented - de facto fictitious students. He gave another example: "the rector of the University of Warsaw met with the councils of those faculties that have the category B (best category is A+, and the worst is C - ed. PAP). He asked them to take corrective action to advance to category A the latest in 2021. This is an excellent example of pro-quality measure" - he said.
He also spoke about the university, which would not benefit from the new algorithm because it had a too high number of students per teacher. Rector of the university came up with the idea, to offer employment contracts to a few dozen graduate students in order to improve the results. "A very good move" - Gowin praised the idea.
During the meeting of the Senate committee, Deputy Prime Minister presented the assumptions of the so-called Gowin strategy. It consists of three pillars: a package of changes for science and higher education, building bridges between science and the economy, as well as the social responsibility of science.
As for the social responsibility of science, the minister said that on Monday the results would be announced of the competition to support children\'s universities. Also on that day, the first science bus will drive out into Poland. The bus will be equipped with mobile science lab, operated by animators trained by the Copernicus Science Centre. In addition, the call for entries to the competition for the Universities of the Third Age has already been closed. "We want to select 16 operators. They, in collaboration with specific universities of the third age (...), will have the ministry grants at their disposal" - said Gowin.
As for the science and business cooperation, the ministry is planning another law on innovation. "We anticipate something we talked about from the beginning - doubling the incentives for research and development. Today, this relief is 50 percent, the idea is to have 100 percent relief" - he said.
Gowin drew attention to the reform of the National Centre for Research and Development. He noted that in the current Framework Programme, the beneficiaries of the Centre\'s programs financed from European funds should be entrepreneurs, not universities. "Reaching for the money (by entrepreneurs - ed. PAP) is met with a moderate interest. We have a really serious problem in this area" - said the Minister of Science.
Minister also spoke about the nearly completed work on the creation of the National Institute of Technology, or the reform of research institutes. "After the German fashion of the Fraunhofer (Institute - ed. PAP) we want to connect research institutes in competency networks to better utilize the potential" - said Gowin.
PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland
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