The University of Algarve will make strong cuts in the hiring of visiting professors, in light of the reduction in its budget, in 2012.
The Algarve university, similarly to what happened to its counterparts, saw direct transfers from the State to drop by 8,5 percent, that is, it will receive "about 3 million euros less" than in 2011.
The rector of UAlg João Guerreiro even spoke of a "war budget" in the radio program "Impressions", jointly promoted by the Sul Informação and by Rádio Universitária do Algarve RUA FM. The interview was originally aired yesterday and can be re-listened in full on Saturday at 12 noon on 102.7 FM or on www.street.pt.
UAlg's budget for 2012 is 55,4 million euros, the majority of which will be applied to personnel expenses. Of this money, the biggest part goes to pay teachers.
"We had to do with faculties and schools an exercise to reduce expenses, with a reflection on the level of hiring guest professors who were or were in replacement of staff professors in the doctoral process, for which we created facilities in the last few years to dedicate part-time to the doctorate, or guests who were an asset to the university and brought lessons and skills from their professional experience», explained João Guerreiro.
Due to the cuts, the doctoral processes of many UAlg professors “will likely suffer delays”. And the most ridiculous thing, stressed the rector, is that there is a “very heavy” process of obtaining a doctorate degree among the professors of the UAlg staff, as a result of the demands of the tutelage. “We have about 140 ongoing doctoral processes, some of them supported by UAlg,” he said.
«This measure is in contradiction with another norm that requires us to have teachers hired in a certain number of years. But public policies are contradictory. On the one hand, they force us to train teachers at a certain pace, but then they don't give us the necessary resources», criticized João Guerreiro.
“We also entered the operational area, saving electricity and other resources and renegotiating service provision contracts. In short, it is a budget that forces us to introduce much greater rigor in university management and to dispense with some external collaborations that were important for the university, but which we were unable to maintain», he summed up.
Despite admitting that something will be lost at the pedagogical level, UAlg will try to make up for the absence of these inputs from the professional world by «stimulating the university's capacity to contract with companies the placement of students in professional internships».
The current situation will motivate “a general restructuring” at UAlg, with greater incidence in two organic units, the Superior School of Engineering (ESE) and the Faculty of Science and Technology (FCT).
If, in the case of the ESE, it is the decrease in the number of students and the many vacancies that have been unfilled that forces us to rethink the organization, in FCT, in addition to fewer students, it is still proceeding to stabilize the union of three organic units in one only college, implemented three years ago.
“The budget proposal is always closely linked to transfers from the State Budget. There is very little room for maneuver», illustrated João Guerreiro. What can make a difference are the own revenues, which come essentially from bribes.
With the decrease, albeit not very substantial, in the 1st year students in the courses of the university and polytechnic subsystems, UAlg is investing on other fronts, namely in more offer for the 2nd and 3rd cycle and in the Technological Specialization Courses (CET ), which confer the 4th level.
If, on the one hand, in 2nd and 3rd cycle courses, aka masters and doctorates, the contribution to tuition fees is much more substantial and the financial availability of students also tends to be greater, on the other there has been a great demand for all CET offered by UAlg. «We have always had more candidates than vacancies», revealed João Guerreiro.
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