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Government mulls university tuition

Proposal not going over well with some students

By Kimberly Ashton
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 14th, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
Czech university students may soon have to start paying to take classes.
Although Prague has the largest concentration of university students in the European Union, the Czech Republic turns out a markedly low number of graduates when compared with other developed countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Meanwhile, the government is in preliminary talks to introduce a tuition-based higher-education model in the hopes of bolstering the economy, a move that is not sitting well with some student associations.  
“It is still true that the Czech Republic has a very low graduation rate,” says professor Petr Matějů of the Education Ministry. “This is due to the fact that the Czech system of [university] education is still supply-driven … very much constrained in its growth by limited public resources, while the most dynamic systems of [university] education are demand-driven, able to meet the growing demand by using both public and private resources, including tuition fees.”
This type of supply-driven system is exactly what Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek and the Education Ministry hope to cash in on.
The new model would include public university tuition fees, a system of loans, grants and savings for education, Matějů says. It’s now being prepared at the Education and Finance ministries, and some believe a tuition-based university system could be in effect in as few as three years. Matějů, however, is less certain about the time frame.
“When and to what extent this new model will be implemented very much depends on the decision of the government to lift the embargo put on tuition fees in its coalition declaration,” Matějů says. “There is some hope that the deferred tuition-fee system might be politically acceptable, but it depends on how the political debate on this sensitive issue will evolve.”
Under the Education Ministry proposal, students wouldn’t have to pay off their tuition until after they graduate and are earning an “average” wage. A system of loans would be launched beforehand and the money would be paid back in installments from the graduate’s wages. Also, tuition would only apply to students who started their education after the law was introduced. Those who started their studies earlier wouldn’t have to pay tuition, according to ministry officials. Right now, a public higher-education degree does not cost students anything.
Former Education Minister Dana Kuchtová, who resigned last month amid allegations of mismanagement, says the idea of having students pay after they graduate and get jobs is a way to keep the coalition promise not to introduce direct tuition. This plan would also allow lower-income students to afford education. Now, she says, with housing and traveling costs, many lower-income families can barely afford to send a child to university.
In any case, Kuchtová says, if the plan moves forward it will likely take three to four years to introduce.
According to this year’s OECD analysis, only 13 percent of the Czech population holds a university degree. This figure is half the average for OECD countries as a whole. In the United Kingdom and the United States, which are both OECD countries, that number is 35 percent.
Meanwhile, the European Statistical Office reports that Prague has a high percentage of students when compared to its population of people age 20 to 24. But despite Prague’s high numbers, central Bohemia, overall, has one of Europe’s lowest concentrations of students, the Eurostat report states.
Matějů says the way to increase the number of university graduates is not only to change the system of financing but to diversify the system by creating a large segment of colleges providing professional lower-level tertiary education, making the system more open to private funding.
“If the Czech system won’t be able to open up significantly in the near future, it will have negative effects both on competitiveness and future economic growth,” Matějů says.
As could be expected, the new plan isn‘t going over well with some students‘ associations.
Jan Říha, vice chairman of the Students’ Chamber of the Council of Higher Education Institutions, is opposed to the introduction of tuition.
“We do not believe the introduction of tuition fees will have a positive impact on higher education and the students participating in it,” he says. “The examples from other European countries provide quite an opposite view: cutting of public expenses, regular increase of tuition fee level, reduction of state guaranteed student-loan programs and rising pressure on students to work as well besides studying.”
The new system would put lower-income students at a disadvantage, he says, and he dismisses the argument that the postponement of the fees solves the problem.
“It is not easy to cover all costs linked to higher education studies even now. How could it be easier to do so, when tuition fees are introduced? And it is not so much important whether tuition fees are so-called ‘postponed’ ones or not,” Říha says. “The solution we seek is a combination of tax allocations, increase of public expenses and promoting private sector investment.”
Indeed, the OECD’s report states that OECD countries spend, on average, more than $14,000 (256,760 Kč) per student per year, while the Czech Republic spends only $6,752 on each student every year. Still, the country’s overall spending on university studies has increased 45 percent in the past decade, and the number of students has doubled over the same time frame. Last year, the country’s universities obtained 19.6 billion Kč in funding from the state and in September were allotted another 1 billion Kč, according to a report by Czech News Agency (ČTK), and about 100,000 students are in Czech universities.
“We put an important question to our politicians and public: If higher education is our priority, and also a priority of the program declaration of our contemporary government, why aren’t we looking for ways how not to increase but to decrease public funding?” Říha asks.

Kimberly Ashton can be reached at kashton@praguepost.com


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