The associations of non-professorial academic staff of the University of Zurich (VAUZ) and the ETH Zurich (AVETH) have published three reports on the situation of their doctoral and postdoctoral students based on surveys at both universities.
Please find the press releases and links to the reports here: VAUZ / AVETH
In consultation with Eurodoc, Actionuni participated in a public consultation on how EU funds should be used in the areas of investment, research &innovation, SMEs and the single market.
We highlighted in particular the importance of a full funding of EU research programs and asked the EU to:
You’ll find our complete answers here (PDF)
It is not very common for actionuni providing a voting recommendation on political topics which do not concern the scientific staff at first sight. But since the no-billag initiative does have direct and indirect influence on higher education institutes and the scientific staff, actionuni clearly recommends voting no in the upcoming no-billag initiative, as (inter alia) the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences and the fh-zh do.
Further arguments as well as a profound statement can be found here.
On 5 April 2017, the NZZ has published an extensive dossier on the situation of the non-professorial academic staff in Switzerland. Co-president Florian Lippke took part in a dispute with swissuniversities president Michael Hengartner; co-president Andrea Tamas via telephone interview gave additional positions on the situation of the non-professorial academic staff at Universities of Applied Sciences and Universities of Teacher Education. The full dossier can be found here.
Young researchers at the University of St. Gallen will give themselves a new organizational structure. A telephone interview by the responsible journalist from the St. Galler Tagblatt with Florian Lippke gave us the chance to welcome these new developments and to stress the importance of well-defined conditions for the researchers who are actively involved.
The article can be found here.
Just before the discussion on the mass immigration initiative in the parliament, actionuni co-president Andrea Tamas gave an interview to the German radio station Deutschlandfunk. She stressed the relevancy of the ratification of the Croatia protocol within the timeframe given by the EU to not loose association to the European research program Horizon2020.
The short broadcast can be found here.
actionuni has given feedback to the proposed financing scheme within the HFKG. For Universities of Applied Sciences, the model 85/15 is preferred unanimously, implying a moderate shift towards giving research a higher importance. Among the members of the universities, no clear consent was reached which financing model should be used.
A second feedback was requested regarding the topic of a simplified second accreditation process for universities, which have passed a first accreditation without obligations. actionuni supports the position of the Swiss Accreditation Council to postpone the decision whether and how a simplified accreditation process should be implemented until 2019 once more experience about the new accreditation system has been gathered.
Das SBFI schlägt eine Revision der “Verordnung über die Ergänzungsprüfung für die Zulassung von Inhaberinnen und Inhabern eines eidgenössischen Berufsmaturitätszeugnisses zu den universitären Hochschulen” vor, die es neu auch Inhaberinnen und Inhabern einer gesamtschweizerisch anerkannten Fachmaturität den Zugang zu den universitären Hochschulen ermöglicht.
actionuni begrüsst die vorgeschlagene Ergänzung.
On 13 April 2016, co-president Florian Lippke (University of Fribourg) represented actionuni during a hearing of Science, Education and Culture Committee SECC of the National Council (WBK-N / CSEC-N). The hearing regarded the recently released federal message on education, research and innovation policy.
actionuni stressed as its main points:
A position paper to support Florian Lippke’s presentation was developed by the board:
BFI-Botschaft 2017-2020_Position Mittelbau_WBK-N 13-04-16_d
Message FRI 2017-2020_Positions Corps intermédiaire_CSEC-N 13-04-16_f
The BFI-Botschaft / message FRI / messaggio ERI has been defined on 25 February 2016 by the Federal Council. According to the government, in the next four years investments in research and education shall grow 2%, which is significantly less than in the previous period. This is stated in the federal message on education, research and innovation policy for the years 2017-2010 (BFI-Botschaft), which was passed on 24th February. Back in November 2015, in the course of the stabilisation programm for the national finances 2017-2019 which is currently being negotiated, growth in investments had already been reduced from 3.2 to 2.2 %. According to a response by swissuniversities, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the ETHs and the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences this puts the role of Switzerland in the area of research, education and innovation into jeopardy at a moment in time in which the country threatens to lose its access to European research programmes. The total budget projected for research and education amounts to 26 billion CHF. Continue reading The federal message on education, research and innovation policy has been published