It is expected that the Federal Council will publish its Dispatch on ERI (Education, Research and Innovation) for 2008 to 2011 in November this year. The Dispatch is the Federal Government’s fundamental planning instrument in the area of Education. The Executive proposes that expenditure on education should rise by 4.5 percent per year during this period. The Parliament and the cantons think this is clearly too little. The Swiss Council of States is asking for an increase of 6 percent and the National Council for 8 percent, the same as the cantons. The campaign’s supporters in the National Council say the overwhelming acceptance of the so-called Educational Constitution by the nation in May 2006 was an additional clear call to the politicians to strengthen education.

Solidarity for more funding

The discussion about the financing of education in the coming years is now leading to an alliance between the country’s most important educational and research institutions. (1) The “National Summit on Education and Research”, which took place at the University of Basel on Friday 20 October 2006, called on the politicians to secure Switzerland’s long-term future as a location for knowledge by a considerable increase in investments.

“Education, research and innovation are the backbone of this country’s future,” said ETH President Ernst Hafen in an interview with “ETH Life“ in the run-up to the Basel event. However, Hafen’s view is that “The proposed 4.5 percent annual growth in the ERI budget is far too small to carry out our tasks.” In particular he says that the federal government has entered into new obligations by promoting vocational training and the Universities of Applied Sciences, “And these are consuming a significant proportion of the resources.”

Switzerland is a talent hub and needs investments

Hafen added that “Switzerland is the talent hub of the globalised world.” He said the basic reasons for this were firstly that Swiss vocational training was outstandingly good when compared internationally and secondly the fact that according to the latest Newsweek Ranking, five Swiss institutions of higher education figure in the world’s Top 50: ETH Zurich as the best continental European higher education institution, and also EPF Lausanne and the Universities of Geneva, Zurich and Basel.(2)

Neglecting investment in education would cause Switzerland to fall behind in an international comparison, says ETH President Ernst Hafen in the run-up to the Basel Education Summit. large

However, the ETH President is worried that “If we don’t invest now, our higher education institutions will no longer be competitive when compared internationally. That is because with higher education institution rankings and the Bologna Reform, training is also becoming increasingly global.“ A degree programme at a Swiss institution of higher education would then be attractive to students if the range of courses offered and the professor-student ratios are comparable with the best peer universities.

Fear that ground will be lost

Hafen says “I am going to Basel to make it clear that because of the additional obligations, the figure of 4.5 percent means decline instead of growth, especially from the point of view of institutions of higher education like ETH Zurich. That causes me great concern. The 6 percent being talked about doesn’t go much further either, it barely safeguards the status quo.“ He says the higher educational institution rankings showed that globally ETH remained in the leading group. However, it was also clear from the ranking lists that the Asian institutions of higher education in particular were making rapid strides towards the top. “When I see that countries like Korea or Finland have increased their public funding of research by ten or more percent annually for a decade, whereas Switzerland shows zero growth over the same period of time, to me that is a clear alarm signal.”

According to Hafen, the central importance to Switzerland of education as a raw material has been affirmed repeatedly in political circles – there is now an urgent need for a declaration of belief in that in funding as well: “In my opinion it is not acceptable for agriculture, for example, to be played off against education in the financial political discussion, as happened in the last ERI Dispatch war.”