Speech of the Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek at the Innovation Forum on the White Book of the Tertiary Education Delivered on 12th May 2008

This is already the second Innovation Forum. The first one was held at the beginning of the year. It means that this government is able to work on enhancement of the innovation and educational potential of the Czech Republic with approximately the same frequency as the opposition adjures its fall. And it is rather fair speed ... Just this event shows why the government should not leave. Together with Minister Liška we are opening the public debate on the reform of the university education today. The first innovation forum - and many of you took part in it – dealt with the innovation encouragement. In the meantime the government approved the draft of the reform of research, development and innovation which had been submitted by the Research and Development Council. This rapid and effective advance would not be possible without enormous efforts and support of many of yours. Just because of this, at this place I would like to thank you for your help, which is also declared by your attendance at this conference.

We have a common objective – to enhance the competitiveness of the Czech Republic. For a small country with only limited mineral resources there is no other way to success than the accent on the high-quality education, on advanced science and research, on the innovation potential development. If success is our objective, the vision cannot be anything else than the increase of quality of life and satisfying spiritual and material aspirations of all the citizens of the Czech Republic just through this success. How to achieve this? The final answer to that question is not and cannot be exclusively in hands of the government, in hands of officials. Thinking is a private matter. Education is a private possession. Ideas, discoveries are concocted primarily in heads of individuals, not as a result of some collective idea. It does not exclude teamwork, of course; I would not like somebody to quibble over my words. Therefore the university education reform must not be just a bureaucratic concept. The White Book of the Tertiary Education prepared by the Ministry of Education in cooperation with an expert group represents huge volume of useful work. But we want to lead a discussion on it. We want to scarify the White Book; or rather we want to lead a debate on it. I would prefer not to make any change in the White Book. But we want people to contribute to the reform and we want them to become identified with the submitted changes.

That is why we are here today. The success on the market of ideas, which is the most profitable and the most powerful world bursa, is based on continuous and never-ending work of many motivated and high-skilled and inspired individuals. You certainly belong to them and I believe you will help us, I believe you will help our country and your children. We must hurry up. A lot of things have been neglected in the intervening years. Although it could seem that many efforts have been extorted on the reform, it was this government which started it, infact. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Physical Training received the assignment on 7th March 2007 at the meeting of the government during which the government learnt first about the draft of the reform. Before I get down to the White Book itself, the first version of which is available, allow me a few more general comments on the role of the university education.

As I have already said, the path to success begins by high-quality education. It is a path to success of an individual, and the success of a society consists of success of individuals. If we do not allow an individual, who has preconditions and a will, to have a possibility to gain high-quality education, we will do harm to ourselves, above all. But concurrently, we would deprive this country of certain amount of its potential. If we do not enable people of all social levels to achieve through their own diligence and effort as high-quality education as possible, we will deprive them of great deal of their freedom. In an open society, universities play a role of elevators to success; they are powerful tools of social mobility. He, who gains education, can move up the social ladder. The freedom to study and the education market are the same as any other freedom and any other market. Socialism and bureaucratic planning cause impassable inequalities and fatal deficit. That is to say, people cannot use their potential. Economists call it "costs of lost opportunities". He, who gets in that elevator, will draw all of us upwards. He, who does not get in it, will slow down the society. Exactly this is the case of our so called free of charge education system. I say "so called" because study is nowhere near free of charge nowadays. Moreover, the system withholds education in particular those from underprivileged social classes. An idol of "free of charge university education" cannot be our objective. It does not mean that our objective should be the introduction of tuition. Also this would be a wrong debate. Our objective is an openness of the system, an openness which would enable to study everyone who has preconditions and the will to study. Let us debate through what means we could achieve this.

Education is the best investment. It is often said – and it is true. But do we agree on the character of that investment? I firmly claim that education is primarily a private investment - a private investment which will be a benefit for both the investor and the society. Let us create conditions for those investments – investment incentives for everybody. Education is not an exception to the market rule, on the contrary. Education is highly specific and sophisticated possession. Thus the validity of a classical Austrian school principle is confirmed – it is the offer side which is crucial. If education opportunities are not broaden, great deal of demand will not be satisfied. To broaden the offer of universities means to enhance competition. Do not pretend that university education is not a kind of a product. It is a product. It is a product which many of young people want to buy, but it is not possible to get it for love or money. It is the same situation as under the socialist era when there were a lot of shortage goods. That is to say, the offer side usually fails in the centralized system.

Let us remove residuals of socialism from the university education system. Let us provide university managements more autonomy and responsibility. Apart from state subsidies, let us enable them access to private resources and the cooperation wit the private sector. Let us place our students in a role of clients who can freely choose from a large offer, so that they need not queue for shortage goods. World expertises show that there is a rule of proportion between the extent of managerial autonomy and responsibility of university managers, and the effectiveness of universities, that competition of universities is a sound phenomenon. The extent with which they are able to contribute to the development of knowledge and to the growth of the innovation potential find directly expression in their prestige, in number of students and on their budgets. We have a problem with the competition of universities in the entire Europe, not only in the Czech Republic. That is why the highest positions among the world universities are held by Americans. Let us give our universities the same conditions as opportunities as it is in the most successful countries. And let us require them to be in that "first league" soon. The reform of universities has connection with the reform of the support of science and research, which I have already mentioned. It is also based on competition increase, on higher responsibility for results, on a support of the best institutes, on an accent on private initiatives and private investments.

However, the scope of university education is broader. Not all students will win recognition in top-ranking research, not all of them will be employed in scientific laboratories. Top-ranking universities push forward our knowledge, but results must be also applied by somebody. Therefore, apart from the accent on excellence, we also need to extend the offer on the lower degree of the tertiary education. It is a key to solution of seemingly insoluble problem: how to enhance quality of education and concurrently its accessibility. We need differentiated, flexible university education, in fact, which on the one hand will be able to offer top-ranking science, and on the other hand wide opportunities of a lower-ranking bachelor study. Then, applicants will be able to choose according to their needs and abilities. Part of changes which will open universities to larger number of students must be undoubtedly the reform of funding, including appropriate form of participation. Tuition, or rather a postponed payment for education is one of tools, which will enable to reach the objective: openness of the system. However, let us cease to limit ourselves to debate just to the only one tool. Let us rather speak about grants, loans, scholarship, and saving for education. We must start with this. Nowadays, we punish applicants from unprivileged families twice, in fact. On the one hand they have lower chances to be admitted, on the other hand there is no efficient system, which would make funding of their studies possible. As I have already said in the introduction, our objective is to enhance competitiveness of the Czech Republic. It means both to create conditions for extension of the offer of education and to prepare financial tools which would enable students to use the offer. This is the only one way how to proceed in the first league of competition – also smaller countries were successful: Finland or Estonia. It is really the only one way. High quality school system will also facilitate implementation of other reforms, just because it strengthens the offer side. Unemployment will be lower and consequently salaries of graduates will be higher as well as the tax collection and payments to solidarity systems. Moreover, high quality education will enable to solve problems of the pension system and to increase solidarity among those who want to be productive for a long time and those who cannot or do not want to do so because of various reasons. Let us solve the problem of university education and thus we will gain a key to solution of other problems. That is why we want to implement greater part of the reform by the elections. It does not mean that we will limit ourselves just to debate to the White Book of Tertiary Education. Minister Liška undertook to submit it to the government by the end of this year. The debate can be held by autumn, then.

I do not expect everybody will agree with everything. The debate must be on facts. There is not much time left. I also warn about reservations caused by particular interests of the individual universities, segments of tertiary education, ministries or even the individual officials. Chances to push through such comments will be very small. If I said that the ambition of the government is neither to centrally exercise authority over universities nor to push the reform through in a bureaucratic manner, then I should say that one centralistic element will be used: respect to interests of university school system as a whole. High quality rules which will not prefer certain subjects will eventually benefit all parts of the system, even those which would require getting some privileges at the expense of others. We must protect competition; it means that we must refuse both elitism and egalitarianism. Universities must be neither an exclusive private club nor a vague arena of mediocrity. University education must be an open race and everyone will be able to participate in it. Best ones will be setting the pace and they will encourage the others. Result of what I have said here might indicate that our university system has only weaknesses and drawbacks. But it is not so, and the authors of the White Book do not claim that either. I think they identified the biggest problems and proposed solutions which are in accordance with the recommendation of the OECD. They also appreciated all the good what has taken place in our tertiary education after 1989.

Nevertheless, we would not make progress only by mutual assuring that we are good. As Marcus Aurelius said: "Reproach of a genius is better that a praise of an idiot". I do not regard myself as a genius, but I do not want to raise a suspicion that I am the opposite. Therefore, I would like to draw your attention to recommendation of authors of the White Book, which I consider as crucial.

Objectives of the Reform of Tertiary Education

• The objective is not an "office", but dynamics, I mean less direction – more competition;
- The system of tertiary education must be more diversified to be able to satisfy varied demand of applicants concerning branches of study, and varied demand of employers concerning graduates;
- Highly diversified system cannot be managed by officials – universities should be given more managerial autonomy and responsibility;
- The role of transparent financial tools must be enhanced – everyone should know what effect a decision will bring, and that quality will pay off;
- Quality will increase only if the student in a role of a client will be the main actor;
- Public funding of educational activities of universities must be realized only through students, regardless type of university which they want to study;
- Private funding must have a nature of an investment with potentially high revenue, it will be possible to borrow money for that investment and to repay it from its revenue;
- This leads us to considering a postponed scholarship, but it is not the most important element of the reform.
• Our objective is not school but student and excellent graduate - It is necessary to open the system to all who are interested in study, who have preconditions and who will bear more responsibility for their decision to study certain branch than it is nowadays, diversification of branches and participation of students will contribute to it – the result will be rationalization of the demand for branches and offers of programme of study; - It is necessary to facilitate the access to the tertiary educational system, especially to those who need it most, therefore we must unify the system of social aid and to target it directly to students, to introduce grants, scholarships, loans, saving for education;
- Universities must be assessed according to their results, a successful graduate, excellent results of research, and innovations must be the basic criteria.
• Research and development results must stand the test in the world competition and to increase innovation and cultural potential of the country - top-ranking research reaching world parameters cannot be done by everyone (everyone can just pretend to do so, at a maximum) – let us create conditions for establishing top-tanking research universities or colleges;
- Much more profit must be gained from top-ranking research in comparison with the existing state – we cannot afford to fund research of that what has already been researched, we cannot finance production of tons of paper covered with writing;
- Let us create conditions for development of partnership between research universities and firms, which want to build their success on innovations – do not let us be afraid of breaching barriers between the public and private sector; both sides will make a profit on it, and thus we will increase the innovation potential of the country;
Based on this it is clear what reform of the university system we would like to implement. It should have three "C".

What reform do we need?

• It should be consistent: partial and cosmetic changes would cause the same tensions as really radical changes, but they would not lead to our objective; let us implement a real change leading to the objective;
• It should be consensual: we must be able to convince most of actors, coalition partners and opposition of the necessity of the reform; • It should be continual: the new system must be set in such a way, so that it could be able to adapt itself to the external competition continuously (to minimize the influence of politics).

If I am to summarize the content of the university system reform using just three crucial words, I would use words: OPENNESS, FLEXIBILITY AND COMPETITION. In conclusion I would like to warn: do not let us be discouraged by those who are frightened by painfulness of reforms. Reforms which are the most painful and which do not bring fruit are compromise and sketchy reforms – reforms which are results of timidity. World experiences show that success of universities is based on the increase of competition. Are those who refuse to lead our universities along the same path really convinced that in our country the competition will cause devastation of the level of education? Or, are they just afraid of their failure in a sound, free and competitive system? We should have more self-assurance, not to be afraid of competition – on the contrary, we should welcome it. We can show it as early as during the debate on the White Book. Do not let us to be frightened by anybody. As people say – the worst death is that caused by fright.