Solving the financial problem for university autonomy

State budget will be spent on high quality institutions of university education. Picture: ST.

Spending nearly 173 trillion VND for university education

Financial sources for university education include state budget and legal revenues of university education institutions. Over the past years, the state budget has secured 20% of total state budget expenditure on education and training, including university education. According to the Ministry of Finance, from 2013 to 2017, the state budget has spent VND1,120,355 billion on education and training, of which VND 172,905 billion was spent on university education.

In fact in recent years, state budget spending on higher education has been more limited because of the limited state budget expenditure. Besides, there are also some difficulties on the basis and mode of spending state budget for university education.

According to Pham Van Truong, Director of the Administrative and Financial Department, the first disadvantage is that the basis for allocation of state budget is not linked to quality criteria and outputs, and it is also based on the ability of the state budget and other inputs. In addition, our country has not yet developed a policy of allocating state budget based on the mode of procurement and procurement of public service delivery, despite the relevant legal documents.

According to the representative of the Department of Finance and Public Administration, university education is completely capable of financial autonomy and is being guided by the general policy of the Party and State on promoting autonomy for higher education, including financial autonomy due to other legal sources. For example, in addition to revenue from tuition fees, schools also have revenue from training services; joint ventures associated with businesses ... However, according to the schools, the current tuition fees are not consistent with the actual training costs of the groups and levels of training. For public higher education institutions, the pricing of training services at the present time does not fully cover the actual costs incurred (wages, direct costs, management costs, depreciation costs) and fixed fees are low, not close to reality. Low tuition fees are one of the causes that affect the financial resources of university education institutions. Moreover, university education institutions are not active in production, business, scientific research and technology transfer, so the revenue from these activities is modest.

Allocation of state budget by mode of order and bidding

It can be seen that the establishment of higher education institutions, including financial autonomy, is necessary in the context of the State's efforts to restructure the budget. However, for universities, "solving financial problems" is not a simple task, especially, in the near future, when most universities implement autonomy.

According to Pham Van Truong, in the coming time, the Ministry of Finance will restructure State budget expenditure for university education institutions. "The state budget will be spent on the restructured number of higher education institutions, high-quality university education institutions and some higher education institutions, avoiding spending state budget for university education institutions. It is not necessary for institutions of higher learning to maintain their activities, including those that undertake the task of educating teachers," said Truong.

To do this, it is necessary to allocate the state budget in line with new payment methods, such as placing orders, bidding linked to outputs, coupled with the quantity and quality of services, gradually reducing the budget allocation under mission, at the same time implementation of policies on quality assurance of public services in university education.

Therefore, the Ministry of Finance proposed the Ministry of Education and Training to co-ordinate with other ministries and localities (parent agencies of public university education) to merge, consolidate or dissolve universities and educational institutions that are ineffective, and it is not necessary for every province to establish a university. To organize, reorganize and concentrate on building a number of key pedagogical schools for training teachers and educational management. At the same time, the Ministry of Education and Training must promulgate regulations on economic-technical norms, quality criteria and output standards in university education as a basis for studying the change in the mode of distribution, to use state budget for university education in order to progress towards the allocation of state budget for university education according to the output standard.

"The Ministry of Finance has submitted to the Government a draft decree regulating the assignment, placing orders or bidding for the provision of public products and services using state budget funds from regular expenditures. After the decree is issued, qualified services will be provided through bidding, providing equal opportunity to all university education institutions regardless of public / access to equal opportunity in providing public service delivery on higher education using state budget. With this plan, financially autonomous schools are equally involved in the bidding for public service delivery in higher education, i.e. no "cutting" the state budget, just a modification of the State budget for higher education," Pham Van Truong said.

Particularly, in addition to renovating the structure and mode of state budget expenditure for higher education, these institutions must also take the initiative in improving their autonomy in managing the professional tasks and financial management of their own establishments. To know how to increase revenue by improving the quality of service delivery to attract learners, "win" in bidding for public services from the state budget. At the same time, revenue from service activities, scientific research and technology transfer will be raised to increase the financial resources for the operation of the school.