The 1st Seminar on University Funding demands a stable and predictable funding system
The Rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Elias, opened the 1st Seminar on University Funding, which took place at the Aula Magna of the Historical Building. The rector expressed his wishes for this meeting to be held more times and become a model. When welcoming the attendees, he told them there is a priority factor for him to be debated on: the generational shift in academic staff and administration and services staff. He noted the universities need to go from volunteering to sustainability in order to reach a good functioning. “Our societyʼs future depends on how we train our youngsters”, he said.
The Rector of the University of Barcelona, Joan Elias, opened the 1st Seminar on University Funding, which took place at the Aula Magna of the Historical Building. The rector expressed his wishes for this meeting to be held more times and become a model. When welcoming the attendees, he told them there is a priority factor for him to be debated on: the generational shift in academic staff and administration and services staff. He noted the universities need to go from volunteering to sustainability in order to reach a good functioning. “Our societyʼs future depends on how we train our youngsters”, he said.
Then, the secretary for Universities and Research of Generalitat, Arcadi Navarro, tagged the funding debate as “essential”. “We need an improvement in the funding system now, regarding future generations”, he said. He also thanked the efforts of the university community over the last years of crisis and for having improved, despite the difficult circumstances, the positioning of the Catalan centers. Also, he highlighted “the great comeback to society regarding university activity and its impact”.
The first speaker of this session was Professor Jill Johnes, from the University of Huddersfield, who told about how England went from a centralized funding system based on negotiation and allocation of necessary funds to develop the functions of each university, to a decentralized system based on the reached performance. They also went from free-of-charge universities for students in 1998 to a current university in which a 46 % of the funds comes from the taxes the students pay. This change, she stressed, brought a credit system for the students, who pay depending on their salaries once they graduate and enter the labour market, and which has been applied to masterʼs degrees and PhD programs. According to Johnes, with this, the English universities reached a reasonable efficiency regarding the access to university. Some improvement systems that have been applied to the English universities are the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcome Framework and the Research Excellence Framework, which serve to honor the excellence of universities and which are to be applied to transfer activities. Among the future challenges for the English universities, Johnes said there is the need to “guarantee a financial strength and face demographical changes”.
Ben Jongbloed, from the University of Twente (the Netherlands), said university funding has to achieve the classical objectives -guaranteeing its access, quality and efficiency- but it also has to seek for the excellence in teaching and research, and research studies have to be related to innovation tasks. Moreover, he noted that not all universities have to do the same, and that they should promote entrepreneurship among students. Also, he put emphasis on the difference of the concept between funding according to the costs to achieve an objective or doing so depending on the obtained results, a debate which -he said- is talked about in the Netherlands. In his speech, he touched on the heterogeneity in Europe, regarding the taxes students pay. He also commented on the university performance contracts which have been applied to the Dutch universities, so that the government negotiates with each university about the funding it receives. Last, he presented the university funding as a pyramid whose base would be the stable funding of researchers and their teams, while the top would be some excellence centers with funding based on results.
Juan Hernández, from the University of Jaén, presented figures on the funding of the different public universities in Spain and the differences between the autonomous communities. One of the conclusions was that university funding is pro-cyclic: it worsens if PIB does so and vice-versa. “This prevents us from making plans”, he said. He also noted the tendency to privatize at the university through an increase of student taxes in funding. The lecturer claimed for a university structural funding and for research “otherwise, those who donʼt do research, go bankrupt”. Regarding the student taxes, he said those should be set according to peopleʼs per capita income. He highlighted the positive aspects despite all problems: “we didnʼt lower the graduate students rate, we applied the European space and masterʼs degrees structure with less staff and we improved the academic performance of students”.
During the afternoon, there was a debate between Josep Pallarès, director-general for Universities of Generalitat de Catalunya; Josep M. Vilalta, executive-secretary of the Catalan Association of Public Universities; Francesc Xavier Grau, former rector of the University Rovira i Virgili; Jorge Calero, professor of Applied Economics at the UB, and José García-Montalvo, professor of Economics at the UPF. Among other issues, they talked about the resources that should be assigned to universities. The speakers said universities need enough funding and stability. In this sense, they put emphasis on the need for a predictable funding system. They also analysed the role of private contributions, in particular student taxes. They highlighted the reality of the country has to be taken into account as well as its fiscal system and a debate has followed on whether there is a need for students to pay their taxes. Regarding the grant policies, they stated that the current grant system is weak. Among other issues, they defended a predictable system and noted efforts are also necessary in upper secondary education and training studies. Last, all participants agreed with the idea that the creation of a department of universities, research and innovation would be ideal in the next government, if this would come with means and a policy priming.