CERMAK, Tomas
17. listopadu 15, 708 33 Ostrava-Poruba, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, tomas.cermak@vsb.cz, www.vsb.cz
Abstract: The region of Northern Moravia and Silesia represents a traditional industrial region based on a deposit of high-quality black coal that in course of the 19th an 20th century led to the establishment of a strong industrial potential for the production of iron on the base of coke, for the production of further metallurgical production, and to the establishment of heavy mechanical engineering in the link-up with the coal extraction and the metallurgical production, and finally to the building-up of heavy chemical industry linked-up with the technologies of coal. The key strategic directions are to be the elevation of technological level, productivity of labour and competitive industrial production. And exactly in this direction, VŠB-Technical University Ostrava has a great responsibility for the preparation of the human factor and for orientation of its activities in scientific research towards the technical, economic and ecological problems of the region.On the base of the SWOT-analysis of the development of the technical colleges’ educative system in the period of 1990-1998 in the relation to the Czech industries and Conditions and changes in the research and development capacities in our region are defined necessary steps in education, research and development policy to the revitalization of this industrial region. Necessary changes are in legislative to enable operation of the scientific-technological park.
Keywords: revitalization, old industrial region, education, research, development
The region of Northern Moravia and Silesia represents a traditional industrial region based on a deposit of high-quality black coal that in course of the 19th an 20th century led to the establishment of a strong industrial potential for the production of iron on the base of coke, for the production of further metallurgical production, and to the establishment of heavy mechanical engineering in the link-up with the coal extraction and the metallurgical production, and finally to the building-up of heavy chemical industry linked-up with the technologies of coal. All these products necessitate an extraordinary high consumption of electric power and an infrastructure of transport with a preference of railway transport. The region neighbours with the Polish region of Katowice whose characteristic is very similar. Within 7 per cent of the Czech Republic’s total area there live 12,5 per cent of Czech Republic’s inhabitants (1,3 mil.). The region’s contribution to the Gross domestic product (GDP) amounts to about 20 per cent. The state budget’s means directed into the sphere of academic educational system amount to about 6 per cent of national expenditures, and into the sphere of basic research (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic] about 0.5 per cent. By its characteristic the region corresponds to the United States’ Pittsburgh in the fifties, and from the European view to Alsatia-Lotharingia (France, Belgium), North Rhineland-Westphalia (Germany), Sheffield (Great Britain) etc.
The present situation in the region signalizes the danger of social and economic commotionions and therefore a necessity for changing the regions’ economic structure, lowering the energetic and ecological encumbrances, attenuating traditional sectors and developing prospective branches of processing industry, services, trade, logistics and tourism.
The present absence of breaking-up the Czech Republic into regions as well as the absence of the state’s economic, energetical and industrial policy problematizises the responsibility for creating the strategic vision of economic development. It is nevertheless evident that it must be based on the benefits of the region’s strong features created so far during the evolution of the industrial base:
The key strategic directions are to be the elevation of technological level, productivity of labour and competitive industrial production. And exactly in this direction, VŠB-Technical University Ostrava has a great responsibility for the preparation of the human factor and for orientation of its activities in scientific research towards the technical, economic and ecological problems of the region.
VŠB-Technical University Ostrava undergoes since 1990 a significant transformation. Its basic strategy starts from the statements from the industry that 75 - 80 per cent of industry engineers are engaged in the operation, maintenance and trade, so that graduents perform an extensive variety of technical activities and the rest of 10 -20 per cent are employed in the research, development and design. The present basic learning is a luxury that we can scarcely afford under our restricted financial possibilities. At the same time, the excessive specialization restricts the scope for scientific base of learning and by its profundity it can in no event compensate the appropriate specialization that can be acquired only during the industrial practice or in the process of a lifelong education. The main intention of the reform is to develop the capabilities of the future engineer to learn and to use his technical knowledge, to develop his logical consideration, notions of a general conception and to develop his capabilities to work with informations. The development of humanistic education, learning the languages and capabilities of communication create then the preconditions for teamwork with which a future engineer can not dispense. Within the framework of the reform there were opened new subjects of study, which - as a recent report of the Ministry of education of the Czech Republic has stated - have made themselves useful in the market of labour. Especially useful have made themselves the subjects of engineering informatics, telecommunication, measuring and controlling technique, electronics etc. The traditional branches, as well, experienced significant changes that should reflect at the transformation of a region of coal and iron towards a region with coal and iron and with advanced technologies - thus to use the industrial tradition for orientation towards high-quality materials and to pass from the quantitative coefficients of production to the qualitative ones. A great attention was paid to the preparation of the human factor for the solution of ecological encumbrances of the old industrial region, technologies for sewage disposal plants, contaminated earth and atmosphere. It has also changed the structure of the learning from a rigid form to a credit system, increasing the student’s responsibility for the choice of his future profession.
But the process of changes is, too, influenced by negative factors. Among which are:
After 1989 the industrial research was practically reduced to the solving of short-time objectives of individual establishments. The suspension of state-, section- and resort research projects as well as the liquidation of the Institute of theory of metallurgical processes at the Academy of Sciences have meant the abolishment of the state’s subventions for the basic and applied research in the field of metallurgy. The privatization of the metallurgical research base in conditions of non-privatizated companies, for which it was intended, has not made possible its efficient utilization.
The coupon-privatization has led to the fact that the privatization funds which became proprietors - after discovering that it is not possible to await prompt profits - have sold the gained shares at low prices. In the case of the Research Institute of iron metallurgy the management has gained the possibility to re-buy the control package of shares and this meant that at least a part of the innovation potential was retained. In the field of the applied research it came to a drastic reduction in the number of employees to 20-50% of the original number, to the discontinuation of loss-making activities - informatics, persuation of the research, publication and educative activities etc. The expenses for the research have dropped approximately to 50% in notice prices 1990, what - with inclusion of inflation - represents a drop to about 1/5 of the original value in comparable prices. With regard to the fact that the instrumentation and computer technique is being purchased at world-wide actual prices, this balance is deplorable. The Research Institute of iron metallurgy has changed into an innovation company with a made-to-order production in small series based on the own research. The made-to-order research for metallurgical companies has dropped to 10-30% of sales.
In the field of scholastic research - due to the liquidation of the Institute of the theory of metallurgical processes at the Academy of Sciences - the research capacities were abolished without substitution because the transfer of research teams to university has not been realized due to the lack of funds in the state's budget. During the transformation, the Academy of Sciences as a whole has reduced the number of its professionals by a half and it would be therefore logical to await the promotion of scholastic research in the sphere which in a big measure participates in the creation of gross domestic product and of the foreign trade balance - at least at the same rate of promotion as within the framework af the Academy of Sciences.
Compared with advanced countries of the European Union, where the state's subvention of industrial research amounts to 40% of the total means devoted to the science, research and development of technologies, with a double to triple participation of these means in the created gross domestic product, the subventions in the section of the Ministry of industry and trade of the Czech Republic are low. Likewise, the promotion of academic research - in absolute as well as in relative figures - is hitherto minimal and in contrast with maintaining the non-functional model of concentration of research capacities of the scholastic research at the Academy of Sciences with an independent chapter in the state's budget without the relation to the applied research, transfer of technologies and user's sphere. This luxury cannot afford even much richer states than the Czech Republic because the most efficient tranfer of scientific knowledges is realized just by engaging the graduates in the practice.
We must add to these shortages also the generation gap that shifts the age structure of creative professionals to the limit of 55-60. In addition, the bad qualification structure - the relation between creative professionals and the other ones - strongly attenuates the efficiency of the research work. Under the commonly accepted negatives we may also include an unsufficient exploitation of sources of information that is in contrast with a relatively proper level of hardware at the workplaces.
The results of science and research have mostly a more long-term economic impact. The qualified education of professionals in research and development, the formation of scientific research teams as well as the actual solution of scientific research intentions and projects necessitate at least five-years-time relations. The policy of science and research therefore necessitates a long-term and satisfactorily perspective purview. A long-term lack of solving problems in science and research creates considerable historical damages. An underestimated danger consists especially in a longer feedback of processes. In the present time, the impact on the state of economy and on its competitive ability becomes evident. It passed, too, a long time until the state had admitted that the economic growth cannot be left to an invisible arm of the market but that it must enter into the process of innovation of production by its support according to verified experiences in many countries. A long-term policy, clearly declaring and practically realizing certain priorities, gives to the country some quarantee of stability.
Limited natural resources of the Czech Republic make possible to compete only by the human potential - by creative innovation and by a highly qualified manpower. Without its own research and development, the Czech industries are entirely dependent on the permanent purchase of licenses and know-how, what in its consequences means a retardation and a low extent of the product's added value.
A successful research and development is conditioned by a reversible flow of informations from the basic research to an applied one, to the development and practical utilization and back. This must correspond to an functional structure of the research and development as well as to the financial flows and to the emphasis on the quality of the secondary school education as well as engineering or doctorand ones.
It is obvious that the competitive ability of domestic industries is conditioned by creating of a scientific research base in the field of metallurgy and material engineering as a material base for mechanical engineering's production. The realization of this objective is based on the concentration of financial funds, exploitation od scientific research potential, reduction of duplicate solutions, exploitation of instrumentation park as well as on the international cooperation in the framework of EU as well as outside of it. The financial flows for the promotion of the research and development within the framework of the region are absolutely inadequate to the region's economic and particularly industrial importance.
Without the redistribution of financial funds for the research and development in the budget for the nearest years in favour of fundamental tendencies of development of the Ministry of industry and trade of the Czech Republic, which are comparable with the international level and which are capable to ensure the returnability of governmental funds, we can hardly expect a reversal in the unfavorable trend of economics.
At colleges it is necessary to launch the promotion of the purposeful research into the mentioned sphere according to the social orders of sections inclusive the transfer of technologies and application of the achieved results in realization practice.
In this connection it will be necessary to define the strategic national project of development of industry in the Czech Republic in a long-term horizon and through the financial management to ensure a complex conception of the realization of these projects in the chain: academic and university workplace, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, departmental research and innovation enterprise with a graded support of state (grant, partial subvention, indirect subvention).
In relation to these projects it should also take place an innovation of study programmes not only at universities but also at the other institutions of tertiary education whose chaotic coming into existence was no doubt very expensive for the tax-paying citizen, but their returnability appears to be very problematic.
The scientific-technological park (VTP) is an efficient instrument of the development of enterprise and employment rate in the field of advanced technologies and innovation enterprise. This idea was, too, a principle motive of the initiative on the part of VŠB-TU Ostrava and the town of Ostrava which led to the foundation of the VTP Ostrava a.s.
From the world-wide point of view there are more than 250 VTPs in operation, within the Czech Republic there are 27 VTPs established at present, 12 of them are accredited.
The importance of the VTP consists particularly in a closer communication of research and development workplaces with the phase of practical realization and production, in the present situation above all in the communication of public universities (VVŠ) with the newly founded small - and medium - sized companies. From this point of view, it appears to be a very advantageous such a system where public universities are the initiators of inception or even the founders of VTP as a way (scope) for practical application of the results of the own research and development projects. From the purely practical point of view (legal subjectivity, clearly defined mechanism of foundation, operation and eventually extinction, explicitly defined relations and links among the founders etc.) it appears that some of the types of trade companies might be an advantageous form of the VTP.
But in this direction the present legislative amendment of the Act 111/1998 Dig. arranges the participation of public universities in the trade companies not quite unambiguously and in some enactment's even controversely.
At issue are particularly the regulations which on the one side state that the legal acts by which the public university intends to found another legal entity necessitate a preliminary consent of the board of directors of the public university, and on the other hand a regulation of an other paragraph of the same Act states that the public university is not entitled to a monatory or non-monatory deposit to the trade company; that means that the powers delegated earlier to the board of directors are abolished. An evident discrepancy of these regulations of the above mentioned Act had induced us to elaborate a brief analysis of some discrepant regulations that you will find in an enclosure where the wordings of these discrepant regulations are cited together with our comments (in bold) in which we specify the practical consequences of these regulations that could be in certain cases disparate from the original intentions of proposers.
In this concrete case, concerning VTP Ostrava a.s., the regulations of the Act 111/1998 Dig. offend three public universities, namely VŠB-TU Ostrava, University Ostrava and The Silesian University, whose common effort has been to initiate the development of the region, and secondary to react against the tendency of rising unemployment. Within the whole Czech Republic there are at issue nine public universities engaged in trade companies of different types and titles which have the character of VTP.
The presently valid legislative amendment however disables these public universities from the future participation in the trade companies of the VTP-type. In the final consequences - apart from economic losses and unemployment - it artificially creates barriers and is an obstruction to closer connection of public universities - centres of research and development - with the practice.