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The Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) Standard Grants and the publication performance of scientists: a counterfactual analysis of projects awarded in years 2005-2014
Bajgar, Matěj
The Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) is the largest source of project financing for scientists based in the Czech Republic. In recent years, GAČR has distributed grants worth over 4 billion CZK a year. About three quarters of the total funds are allocated to Standard grants. This study is the first to econometrically estimate the impact of GAČR Standard Grants on the publication performance of the researchers the grant supports. We compare the members of Standard Grant research teams (the treatment group) to a control group of researchers who did not participate in a Standard Grant in a given period, but who otherwise resemble the supported researchers. We match the groups based on their primary fields, past publications and grants, academic titles, gender, the type of research institution they are affiliated with, and many other characteristics. Most data comes from the Information System for Research, Development, and Innovation.
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Financial support for students in higher education in the Czech Republic: a system overhaul is required
Münich, Daniel ; Kořínek, Otakar
Financial support for students in higher education in the Czech Republic has not received the attention it deserves over the past decade. Not only has the general public lost little sleep over this matter, but academics and politicians have largely ignored it, too. Information, statistics, and analysis of the targeting and impacts of current student financial support are at best piecemeal and at worst non-existent, which is symptomatic of the little public and policy interest in this matter. As a result, over the past few years there have been only a few minor tweaks made to the existing outdated and underfunded system. International comparisons show that the total amount of financial support for students in the Czech Republic is very low. A large share of that support is also provided across-the-board, meaning that support for the most socio-economically needy students and prospective students is very low. The average total monthly support provided both directly and indirectly to students under 26 years of age is between some 5,300 CZK [euro 200] for those from the poorest backgrounds and 2,700 CZK [euro 110] for others. Support for students aged 26 and above is only around 500 CZK [euro 20] per month, regardless of their economic background. In European comparison, the support for socio-economically weak students is extremely low. Only a very small proportion of students are eligible for publicly funded social scholarships, which provide only minimal financial support in any case. No data is currently collected on the demographic or social status of scholarship recipients. Similarly, there is no data measuring the extent to which children from poorer backgrounds are deterred from university study by the low level of available support. The amount of funding made available through social scholarships and the breadth of the pool of students eligible for them is not regularly increased in response to inflation or students' rising living costs, but is revised in connection with ad hoc raises made to the minimum wage and living wages.
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Teachers’ salaries in 2020 and beyond: will the Czech Republic rest on its laurels?
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, Vladimír
In relative terms, teachers’ pay in the Czech Republic was lower than in most EU and OECD countries until 2017/18. Thanks to an unusually fast pace of growth in the past few years, in 2021, teacher’s pay will almost reach the average for OECD countries and the EU, which is around 90% of the average salary for a university-educated employee in the national economy. Andrej Babiš’s outgoing government will thus fulfil its Summer 2018 program statement. The level of teachers’ pay is a factor in attracting interest in teaching as a profession. Raising interest is necessary not only in order to recruit sufficient numbers of teachers, but to allow selectivity into the profession, allowing for more emphasis on the quality of teaching. These are long-term processes that gradually build the overall quality of the country’s teaching staff, through continuous arrivals and departures from the profession. Therefore, the impact of the teachers’ pay rates on attracting interest in the profession, the quality of teachers’ work, and pupils’ educational outcomes can only be observed over many years, or even decades.
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Social status in Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the Czech Republic over the past 15 years, and an international comparison
Korbel, Václav ; Münich, Daniel
The Czech Republic (CZ) has an historically strong system of vocational education and training (VET), which around 30% of first-year high school (HS) students enter each year. How many students should enter VET has often been debated. However, which students select into VET and how their composition has changed over time has been less examined. This study maps these phenomena by measuring the social status linked to VET programs in the Czech Republic since 2003. Based on previous literature, we define social status as the relative difference in PISA scores of first-year VET students compared to first year students at other types of high schools. The social status thus reflects which students chose VET, and is the sum of various factors that influenced their choice – the expected quality of education, employment prospects after graduation, and the perception and opinions of parents and primary school classmates. If the relative PISA scores of VET students decreased in comparison to those of students who entered other types of high schools from one PISA wave to another, we can interpret this as a decrease in the social status of VET students.
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