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Fears over budget crunches and education’s moment in the spotlight
The devotion of extra resources to education is stoking fears that research has slipped in prominence at a crucial moment for EU spending, and could suffer years of underfunding as a result.
Concern that the two related sectors are fighting for the same money has been heightened by suggested cuts to the EU’s 2021-27 R&D budget.
“My fear is that there is an overall reinforcement of education files,” said Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities.
He pointed to the EU’s European Universities Initiative, which has been given €205 million to pilot cross-border collaboration. EUI networks funded so far “are not about research and innovation but are all about education”, he said.
In addition, Deketelaere described plans to spend €420m from the €3-billion 2021-27 budget of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology on the innovation capacity of higher education as “an attack” on the EIT’s core functions, and flagged “a move to reorient the Marie Curie [researcher mobility] programme into training and education”.
“We have to be careful that we do not transform research and innovation tools to education because education now is popular,” Deketelaere warned.
He called on new research, innovation and education commissioner Mariya Gabriel to ensure the right balance.
Jan Palmowski, secretary general of the Guild of European Research Universities, said education is “higher on the political agenda” at the moment, with the EUI having “captured the imagination of ministers”.
“We need to find ways to excite heads of state for [R&D programme] Horizon Europe as much as the [EUI],” he said.
Palmowski said he was confident that research could be brought into the EUI and there was scope for EIT “adjustments”, but he shared concerns about “the unwillingness of some member states to spend more on the things that really matter”.
Lidia Borrell-Damian, secretary-general of the association of research funders and performers Science Europe, said it is hard to assess proposals on their own because “what matters is spreading funding across research and education”.
“It’s not that education isn’t important,” she said. “But it should not come at the expense of budget cuts in research.”
But Thomas Jørgensen, senior policy officer at the European University Association, said: “This is not about education expanding at the expense of the other, but more about having it play a direct part and strengthening the whole knowledge triangle.”
This article also appeared in Research Europe