Vice-chancellors fear ‘worst-case scenario’ on funding

A collapse in talks over universities’ new funding arrangements in advance of the summer recess and federal elections due in the autumn could force universities to freeze admissions and suspend teaching of some subjects, vice-chancellors have warned.

The fears stem from the failure to reach agreement this month on details of legislation for plans worked out with university heads to replace Austria’s global budget funding system with a model based on places to study in individual subjects and entry restrictions.

The plans were presented in April by the Minister of Science, Research and Economy Reinhold Mitterlehner, of the Austrian People’s Party or ÖVP.

In the present funding system, introduced in 2007, universities operate with a global budget consisting of an 80% performance-based funding share and a 20% formula funding share. Universities sign individual agreements with the government on fixed targets covering a three-year period.

Mitterlehner’s new arrangement was to go hand in hand with an increase in higher education funding by €1.35 billion (US$1.5 billion) to €11 billion (US$12 billion) for the 2019-21 period. However, Mitterlehner resigned in May, and with the ÖVP/Social Democrat coalition in crisis, federal elections were announced for the autumn.

Oliver Vitouch, head of the vice-chancellors’ organisation uniko, or Universities Austria, urgently called for new talks between universities and the government so that an agreement on university funding could be reached by the end of June, bearing in mind parliament going into summer recess and the time it would take to form a new government.

But talks between the Federal Chancellor, Social Democrat Christian Kern, government ministers and university representatives early in June failed, with Social Democrat ministers refusing to agree on legislation, the details of which would be worked out by a new government after the autumn elections, and the ÖVP arguing that it could not approve of additional funding without the issue of how the money should be allocated being settled.

“We’re sliding headlong into a worst-case scenario,” says Vitouch, stressing that it is up to the two government parties and parliament to safeguard university funding. He argues that things have to be sorted out before the election because otherwise it will not be possible to meet the legal deadline for new funding arrangements with institutions for the funding period starting in 2019.

Vitouch has announced that if no clarity about funding is achieved, institutions will have to start with measures such as freezes on admissions and cuts in higher education services “in order not to slip into a funding crisis”.

“We’ll defend our institutions against political irresponsibility with all the means available,” Vitouch warns. These could include his proposal that individual universities suspend teaching in certain subjects.

Michael Gardner Email: michael.gardner@uw-news.com