Today, the Riigikogu held the deliberation of the matter of significant national importance “Role, quality, and bases for funding of the higher education”, initiated by the Cultural Affairs Committee.

Chairman of the Cultural Affairs Committee Aadu Must, Minister of Education and Research Liina Kersna, Member of the Board of Universities Estonia Professor Toomas Asser and Chair of the Higher Education Support Group of the Riigikogu Margit Sutrop delivered reports.

Chairman of the Cultural Affairs Committee Aadu Must underlined that education and educated people had a vital role in the emergence of the Estonian statehood. “Through decades, educated people have been the security and basis of our national independence,” he said. In the opinion of the Chairman, it is good to see that the universities present a united front and work in the name of the success of our higher education.

Must also gave an overview of the discussions on the issues relating to the role, quality and financing of higher education in the Cultural Affairs Committee.

Must said that the Committee had started to prepare for this discussion in 2020, when the Ministry was made a proposal to analyse the funding model of higher education. According to the Chairman, the Committee made clear at the time that the funding model must preserve the autonomy of universities and guarantee the means to achieve national priority objectives, and that higher education funding should be increased to 1.5% of gross domestic product. The topics of entry into the profession studied, the development of doctoral studies and the predictions on workforce were also touched upon. “It was also discussed that in order to maintain and improve the quality of higher education, and to ensure the sustainability of funding, it is necessary to reorganise the entire current system of higher education funding, whether it is made up of scholarships, grants or something else,” Must added.

The Chairman of the Cultural Affairs Committee noted that although one per cent of the gross domestic product was allocated to research and development, the funding of higher education in Estonia was miserable in international comparison, to put it mildly. Must also mentioned as problems the decrease of attractiveness of the work of a lecturer and the wage trap of free higher education. “If it is necessary to reform the funding, it must be kept in mind that it is not simply free higher education, but it also has to ensure the salary for specialists later,” Must said.

Minister of Education and Research Liina Kersna emphasised that the funding of higher education and the future of higher education in a wider sense continued to need a discussion in society. “Both the efficiency and the quality of higher education studies are important. Besides that, higher education studies have to be sufficiently diversified and flexible and meet the expectations of society, including the expectations of the labour market,” the Minister said.

Kersna pointed out that the principle of funding higher education, which had been in force since 2013, and according to which studying full-time at a university course taught in Estonian is free of charge for students, had ensured that all motivated students had the opportunity to acquire high-quality higher education on equal terms. “More students study on free student place in universities in public law and state institutions of professional higher education than before reform even in the situation where the total number of students has significantly decreased due to demographic changes,” she said. According to the Minister, the higher education system has become more efficient, the number of graduates has increased, the percentage of graduates after nominal period of studies has improved and the institutions of higher education teach more in their areas of responsibility.

The Minister also drew attention to the fact that the expenditure on higher education as percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) had dropped from 1.4% to one per cent. She stressed that in international comparison, the Estonian public sector expenditure on higher education as a share of GDP and per student is the lowest among countries comparable to us. At the same time, the parties of the Education Agreement have pointed out that 1.5% of GDP should be allocated to higher education; in that case, higher education lacks around 100 million euro.

In Kersna’s opinion, there are basically three possible ways for acquiring additional funding for higher education in Estonia. First she discussed continuing with the model where the state continued to cover most of the study expenses in higher education, but the students would pay a tuition fee of, for example, 100 euro per month. She thinks that such a system would provide more equal opportunities for students from different backgrounds and make them to think about their decisions more thoroughly; at the same time, the motivation to graduate faster would increase. Entry into universities would probably somewhat decrease, the students should be provided additional motivation, and part of students, like those receiving needs-based study allowances, should be exempted from the tuition fee.

According to the Minister, in the second option the students would have to cover a significantly larger amount, which may differ by fields of study, but on the estimated average, would be around 3000 euro per year. Kersna thinks that the efficiency of higher education would increase as a result, and students who have made an informed choice would enter the universities and have a higher motivation to graduate on time. At the same time, such a system would reduce access to higher education, expenses on support systems would grow and the flow of students to universities abroad would increase.

The third way for attracting private funding would be access to free higher education on the basis of prior academic results, the Minister said. She pointed out that such a system had been in force in Estonia until 2013, but already in 2007, the OECD experts had recommended not to use this system. Although certain higher education institutions could earn additional money in certain specialities, the system would cause worsening of access to higher education.

In the Minister’s opinion, specifying the criteria for free higher education could enable to attract more private funding to the system. “First, it is possible to restrict the possibilities for free studies at the same level of higher education. Second, restricting the so-called time for rethinking should be considered. It is also reasonable not to allow simultaneous studying at several university courses or in several universities,” Kersna said. She also thinks that wider possibilities for part-time study should be considered and foreign students should be requested to pay tuition fee, establishing a higher fee for citizens of third countries. In conclusion the Minister of Education and Research said that the higher education institutions could make better use of the idea that full-time study should be free, but those who wish to pursue part-time studies could be asked to pay tuition fee.

“Nothing more or less than the future of Estonian democracy depends on viable Estonian-language higher education,” Member of the Board of Universities Estonia, Professor Toomas Asser said. “Higher education is a means for raising the level of education of the population, and it is a guarantee for an intelligent society. It is also an important part of shaping of social and health sectors, supporting regional development, it is a part of internal security and certainly helps achieve social cohesion in a wider sense,” he underlined. “Higher education that relies on research, which is the only way we should envision higher education, is an absolute guarantee of knowledge-based world view.”

Asser pointed out that 3500 academic positions in the Estonian universities were filled with people whose knowledge and readiness to teach define the content and quality of our higher education. “What a schoolteacher can do, what a doctor, a nurse and an engineer can do all depends on these lecturers and researchers. What the living environment and public services in the country and in town will be like in the future, it all depends on our higher education,” he said.

The professor also pointed out that the work of lecturers was not highly valued. “As a rector of a university, I and also my good colleagues find it difficult to explain why teaching the teachers is of lesser value than teaching pupils, why teaching is valued less than any other option for people with a doctoral degree. Why the basic salary of half of the lecturers with a doctor’s degree is lower than ten euro per hour, or lower by a quarter than eight euro and 30 cents – it is actually impossible to explain that,” Asser said.

In his opinion, it is important to understand that the government of Estonia manages and finances higher education and research separately. “The fact that both activities are mainly the responsibility of universities does not mean that a university can mix these resources according to its own discretion and ignoring the rules imposed by the government,” the Professor said. Therefore Asser thinks that it cannot be expected that the agreement on funding of research and development would solve the problems of higher education.

“We have been said that the underfunding of higher education cannot be seen anywhere else than in the words of the universities. It has been said that the rise of the universities in university rankings, the good performance of graduates and the increase in research funding show that the situation cannot be that bad,” Asser said. “If we wait until the problem of funding of higher education can be seen in falling in the rankings, then much damage has already been done when that moment arrives. By then, it will have eroded the new generation and the current level of our research.”

In her speech, Head of the Higher Education Support Group of the Riigikogu Margit Sutrop referred to the report of the Higher Education Support Group of the Riigikogu, which gives an overview of the views on higher education among society and the labour market, the higher education institutions, the leaders of higher education and the bodies exercising supervision.

She underlined that the sustainability of the Estonian language and culture, Estonia’s global competitiveness and the future of the statehood of Estonia depended on the quality of the Estonian higher education. “Unfortunately, the future of the statehood of Estonia, and not only higher education, is threatened by the years-lung underfunding of the sphere of higher education. It is unambiguously clear to everybody, including the employers, the lecturers, the students and the leaders of education, that it is impossible to continue in the old way,” she said.

According to her, several problems need to be solved at the same time – ensuring adequate funding for higher education; guaranteeing equal learning opportunities for all those who are able, regardless of their budget, home language or place of residence; providing the labour market with the specialists it needs; guaranteeing the quality of higher education, and ensuring the sustainability of Estonian-language education.

According to Sutrop, acquiring high-quality higher education has two preconditions, which unfortunately are not met. These are the students’ adequate income for free studies and allocating of adequate resources to universities. She noted that due to the current system of study loans and study allowances, which did not ensure sufficient income for students, the students worked more than before. In Sutrop’s opinion, other shortcomings are the small salary of lecturers and the lack of specialists with higher education in vital positions.

“As a result of the free higher education reform that entered into force in 2013/2014, the state took upon itself the obligation to maintain the higher education institutions, which it has not been able to meet,” the Chair of the Support Group said. She pointed out that during the first three years after the entry into force of the reform, the government compensated the universities the private funding they no longer received, but since 2017, the funding of higher education institutions had been practically frozen. At the same time, there are restrictions to involving private funding.

“If the state does not guarantee sustainable funding for higher education and at the same time forbids to ask tuition fee from students studying full-time at the Estonian language study programmes, the higher education institutions start to restrict access, reduce the number of student places, open English language study programmes where it is possible to charge tuition fee, or make allowances in quality. The current funding model almost forces universities to transfer to the English-language studies, thus threatening the future of the Estonian language and culture,” she said.

In Sutrop’s opinion, it is necessary that the political parties reached an agreement or whether to continue with free higher education or to transfer, at least partially, to paid higher education. “If we continue with free higher education, the contribution of the state has to be significantly increased,” she said. “If the government cannot find that money, the higher education institutions should be given more freedom in creating flexible studying opportunities, let it be paid part-time Master’s degree programmes or microdegrees, and for involving private funding in various ways.”

“If we agree on transfer to even partially paid higher education, then it is necessary to create a system that enables to nudge, by writing off study loans and by payment of grants, young people to study specialities the labour market needs,” Sutrop said. She thinks that in order to ensure equal access to higher education, the system of needs-based study allowances should be reviewed so that it would enable everybody to go to the university and study there without working at the same time.

During the debate, Eduard Odinets (Social Democratic Party), Aadu Must (Centre Party), Jaak Valge (Estonian Conservative People’s Party), Jürgen Ligi (Reform Party), Mihhail Lotman (Isamaa), Peeter Ernits (Estonian Conservative People’s Party), Mart Helme (Estonian Conservative People’s Party), Siim Kallas (Reform Party), Tarmo Kruusimäe (Isamaa), Riina Sikkut (Social Democratic Party) and Margit Sutrop (Reform Party) took the floor.

Verbatim record of the sitting (in Estonian)

Photos (Erik Peinar, Riigikogu)

Video recordings of the sittings of the Riigikogu can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/riigikogu.
(Please note that the recording will be uploaded with a delay.)

Riigikogu Press Service
Liisa Johanna Lukk
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