Minister Bek solves problems by questioning their existence, the senate of Charles University agreed

At its Friday meeting, the Academic Senate of Charles University (AS UK) stated in the adopted resolution that the Minister of Education Mikuláš Bek (STAN) solves problems by questioning that there are any problems at all. A call to resign was also voted on, but there was not enough support for it. The reason for the position of AS UK is the pressure of the Ministry of Education and Culture to very quickly introduce uniform wage rates at universities without clarifying the exact parameters of the adjustment, moreover under the threat of penalties. According to the resolution of AS UK, this leads to destabilization and endangerment of public universities. Echo24 finds out Minister Bek’s reaction.

Under the pressure of financial penalties, the Ministry of Education is asking the universities to introduce blanket tariffs. According to the words that were heard at the meeting of AS UK, Charles University has a deep lack of funds for the introduction of a uniform tariff, it would lack at least one billion.

In the discussion, the information that was previously inflected in the public space was heard, that public universities lack approximately ten billion crowns. According to AS UK, the Ministry of Education and Culture offers a “weak patch” in the form of 150 million for additional financing of wage cohesion. However, the uniform tariffs themselves do not represent a problem, according to the senators, the problem lies rather in the fact that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Science is demanding very rapid changes “without clarifying the exact parameters of the planned adjustment and ensuring sufficient funds for deeply underfunded higher education by the Ministry of Education and Culture itself”, which “destabilizes and threatens public higher education schools”.

AS UK pointed out that the low one-off contribution to support the introduction of uniform tariffs is completely insufficient for “any relevant increase in the low wages of academic staff and will result in redundancies and associated further destabilization in the most underfunded fields”.

The specific resolution adopted reads: AS UK expresses serious concern that the Minister of Education, Youth and Sports solves “most problems by questioning their existence”. Among the proposed resolutions was a call for the resignation of Minister Bek, but this did not have sufficient support among the members of AS UK.

The poor financial situation of universities has been drawing attention to the poor financial situation of universities since last March, for example, by the Hour of Truth initiative, which is planning an annual press conference next week. According to representatives of the initiative, underfunded higher education has negative effects on the entire society.

“For a year now, our initiative has been repeatedly drawing attention to the situation that escalated with the strike in October last year. During the press conference, we will recap the development of the negotiations with the government, Minister Mikuláš Bek, which unfortunately did not lead to improvement, and we will call on the representatives of universities to be more active as well,” representatives of the Hour of Truth state in a press release. The members of AS UK agree that the Ministry of Education and Culture has not fulfilled the promises that the department made to the universities.

The Academic Senate of Charles University is a self-governing representative academic body of the university. He has been working at UK since the November Revolution. Currently, AS UK consists of 70 members.