SVU WEBSITE

From the 20th SVU World Congress:

Jan Stejskal - The Czech Universities, Past and Present

The Czech Republic has changed significantly since 1989. One difference is visible everywhere. But how have Czech universities changed? What has happened at the former centers of the Velvet Revolution? Have they really been reformed?

These questions are raised frequently among Czech academics and students, and answers to these questions are crucial. The accession of the Czech Republic into the European Union will happen within few years and Czech universities will be open to students from European Union member nations and thereby face much stronger competition from them. Universities in the Czech Republic are public institutions, funded from the state budget. They are organized traditionally as the topmost level of education designed to provide society with an "educational elite." Their situation and development is therefore crucial for Czech society as a whole.

In my brief presentation I will concentrate on the situation of the humanities and the social sciences.  I collected the statistics in this paper mostly at my home institution, the University of Palacký in Olomouc. In addition I include the results of a student opinion poll conducted anonymously through the Internet during the last few months.This university represents the second oldest institution of higher learning in the Czech Republic, founded by the Jesuits in the 16th century.  Currently about 11,000 students study in seven faculties. The number of students has grown substantially during the last ten years, the increase being about 140 percent.

Unfortunately, the capacity of the university to accommodate students is very limited. About 6,000 young people applied for studies at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Palacký last year. Less than 700 students were admitted or about 11 percent of applicants. It is important to pay attention to students' view of this situation, as expressed in the questionnaire. About 14 percent of students responding thought corruption is involved in the admission of students to the university. Students referred especially to the most prestigious disciplines, such as psychology and law. They also were reproachful about "incompetent" and "frequently-criticized teachers," who teach in several departments. Some students called this "clientelism". The situation of Czech higher education as a whole seems to be similar, but the problems in the humanities and the social sciences are truly alarming. Generally, less than 50 percent of students applying are accepted for studies in universities. A significant change of this trend cannot be expected and government is not planning any substantial change.  Establishing a few new private universities would not change this situation significantly. So what has happened at the Czech universities during the last ten years?  In which way they have been reformed, if they are not educating, as they should be, young people who are able and willing to study?

In fact the universities and especially the humanities and social sciences were reformed only formally. I will leave aside the general lack of financial resources, which continues even during the Social Democratic government, which before the election professed education as their top priority. In my opinion the educational quality of a university is no higher than the professional and intellectual quality of its teachers. Who teaches the new generation which has grown up since the fall of communism? Once again I cite statistics from the University of Palacký. The average age of all teaching staff at the university is about 50 years, while qualified university professors are on average about 62 years old! That means that the average university professor formal studies during the late fifties which represents the "dark ages" of communism in this country. These people are now educating university students. The situation is more or less similar at the other Czech universities. The old generation of professors influenced by the communist way of thinking and especially methodology still hold the leading positions.

This happened partly to the lack of human resources in the field of humanities and partly to a lack of will to make needed changes. Students feel this problem as well. Their most frequent response to the question, "What is the most important problem at your university?" was a lack of young and competent teachers. Said one student: "Everywhere in the university one can see that there is no money. Even, if there were money, they do not use them to pay teachers." Another comment was: "Teachers are not paid well, that is clear. Teachers often let us know about that." And students are also not happy with the old methodology which is usually followed by many of the older colleagues.

The humanities languished by comparison with the natural sciences but the government did nothing to improve this situation. The trend continues to the present time. The generation gap got wider because young graduates are not attracted to the universities and prefer working in commercial sector rather than in academe. The evaluation committee of the Association of the European Universities visited the University of Palacký and described the situation as "alarming." The new law relating to universities did not bring the expected improvement, especially because of the lack of basic resources. The investment in human capital, represented by young people is absent. The system of career growth is very complicated and the potential promotion of young academics depends on the will of the old generation of professors whose decisions in fact affect the future career of their young colleagues. Quality management and measurement common in European and especially American universities is not followed in the Czech Republic. For example, the evaluations made by students are not used and the mobility of young academics is limited. It is customary that Czech academics remain their entire lives at the university where they have studied and taught. Into this environment young people continue to come but, unfortunately, not in sufficient numbers to bring about radical change. However, those who accept the challenge can make some visible improvement despite the small number.

Who are the young people who are now coming to teach at the universities? These people started their studies after the fall of communism and the majority of them have spend some time studying at universities in western Europe or in the United States. These people are full of the new ideas, they know how the standard education in the humanities should look and they are motivated to change the situation at the departments of their specialization. They not only have a lot to teach, to publish and to look for additional resources for their research. But their main problem is, in my opinion, how to deal with the old generation.

The older professors are not inclined to purge themselves of their communist past. They will, in fact, never change and the main error of the last ten years was to expect that they would. The result is the young generation must face the consequences of the communist past rather than the people responsible for it. This problem is not just the traditional conflict of generations, which is customary in every society. This conflict is much more complicated in the Czech Republic and becomes a question of professional ethics, especially at the field of the humanities.

For example, I would cite the situation concerning historians, which is my profession. In addition to numerous conferences, Czech historians formerly attend congresses of historians once every few years. The last congress occurred in autumn 1999. While the first congress organized after the fall of communism had been a gathering of historians who had been persecuted by the communist regime, who had only recently returned to their universities or other institutions, the last congress was completely different. The quality of attendants of the congress has changed dramatically during the ten years.On the one hand, people who actively collaborated with the communists appeared once again; some were even among the organizers of the congress. They probably felt comfortable ten years after the Velvet Revolution. On the other hand a new generation of scholars who started their studies after the fall of communism arrived at the congress for the first time. The young scholars denounced the old generation for their lack of professional ethics and for their failure to honestly deal with their communist past themselves. Surprisingly, even professors who were persecuted by the communist regime did not criticize their colleagues for their collaboration with communism. Very interesting is the book, Who's Who in the Czech Republic. Many university professors do not admit their membership in the Communist party, or even lie about their party involvement before 1989. The old generation unfortunately still plays a crucial role in educating the younger generation. This is not only an ethical question but also a question of methodology. The old professors do not teach according to the new methods, and they often even do not know about them. Some of them even make problems for their younger colleagues who are willing to use the new methods.

We have been waiting for change for 10 years. As in the whole Czech society, the way to reform universities has been much more complicated than we expected at the beginning. Nobody can change people and natural exchange will last another ten years at least. But we do not want to wait. The only possible way is to enlarge the number of young people trained in the west who will teach at Czech universities and to build "islands of the new education and research."

This process has been successful in some places. One can find departments where a young staff has already achieved a majority. Positive and measurable results have appeared soon afterward. The number of students who successfully applied for studies abroad has grown, disciplines new to the Czech environment have been introduced. Unfortunately, however, the government has not supported to far this process. It is rather a result of activities from outside the country. Many foundations have been very active and successful in this field.

The government has promised to concentrate on problems of education, but universities have to manage with more budget cuts instead. For example, budget of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Palacký has been reduced by 10 percent nominally compared with last year. There is not much space to attract young people to stay at the universities. The usual structure of university staff in the Czech Republic according to age currently is as follows: about 10 percent of teachers are under 30 years; 20 percent between 30 and 40; 30 percent between 40 and 50; 25 percent between 50 and 60, and 15 percent over 60 years. Unfortunately despite the fact young people continue to attend the universities, the average age of university teachers continues to grow. There are universities in the Czech Republic, where the average age of teaching staff is growing yearly by one year during the last few years. This means, that there is no generation exchange at all. This situation seems to be really critical.

The government has declared the share of tax money for education is to grow to six percent of GDP by the year 2002. The expenditure for education should increase continuously during the term of the current government, which has been ruling since 1998. Unfortunately, however, the opposite is true and the current situation remains unchanged.

Here is a serious problem which must be solved. It seems, unfortunately, that the problem can be changed only in a natural way. Czech society and the Czech government will not be able to take credit for a change. If the government was more active, change would have happened much earlier for the benefit of the whole society. But there is hope that necessary change will be accomplished by the current and future younger generations.

back to the top of this document

~~~

SVU HOME PAGE, SVU WORLD CONGRESSES, WASHINGTON 2000, ACADEMIC PROGRAM