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SLOVAKIA |
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SLOVAKIA |
RELATION WITH THE PROFESSION
It is difficult to assess the position of public administration as an academic discipline in relation to the profession, but the potential of the academic field to support the development and reform of the civil service is underestimated in Slovakia. The following factors are indications of this problem:
- Government public sector reform activities do not regularly use academic public administration research results, although this is slowly changing after the 1998 parliamentary elections.
- Public administration graduates do not have any real or legislative advantage in recruitment procedures for any level of public administration. The legal conditions for entry into the public administration is the level of education; any type of full secondary or university degree. Therefore, few graduates enter public administration positions due to low salaries and better opportunities in business or law (all of them get a full economic/business or legal education).
- Academia Istropolitana’s high-calibre PA programme (post-diploma, with no degree) in Bratislava was closed due to a lack of support from the central government.
In this context, universities have the important duty to offer part-time education for public servants without a formal PA education in bachelor’s and master’s degree courses, which are currently provided by Matej Bel University’s Faculty of Economics.
Cooperation between academic and public administration institutions to provide in-service training for public servants is still not well developed. This is generally caused by a lack of willingness among ministries to put branch training institutions in competition with universities (personnel management is fully decentralised in Slovakia, and there is no single ministry responsible for personnel management issues). Some branch ministries still do not recognise training provided by academic institutions (for example the Institute for Public Administration within the Ministry of Interior still holds a monopoly in retraining public servants from local state administration offices). Universities have approached the ministries, but this has not increased the level of acceptance of their training courses nor improved coordinating efforts.
Data on PA graduates entering the central or local state administration is not available. There were some attempts to attract young people to work in the central civil service, but all types of graduates were eligible to enter this scheme, which was launched by the previous government. The portion of PA students continuing employment in the civil service is not very high, perhaps less than ten percent (at least for students with an economics background) due to factors mentioned previously. With decreasing numbers of well-paid posts in private business, this percentage will certainly increase.
Despite the fact that changes in the educational background of employees in the civil service are needed (see one example characterised by Table 2), cooperation between universities and the government regarding hiring policies will only improve after adopting a new Civil Service Law being drafted. Under current legislation (the general Labour Code is fully valid for all core public administration), it is in principle impossible to adopt any formal regulation that would give preference to PA graduates in recruiting new civil servants – the final decision on who will be offered employment is the right of the respective head of the organisation.
The government does not purchase research from academic institutions frequently as central government institutions have limited resources to buy outside advisory services. There are more examples in the technical branches, but this type of contracting on PA issues is limited. Cooperation between ministries (particularly the Ministry of the Interior) and academics frequently takes place in an indirect manner, especially via “foreign aid” programmes (e.g., PHARE, among others).
Table 2: Educational Backgrounds of District and Regional Employees (1997)
Source: Internal materials, Ministry of the Interior
Grade
Level of education
12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2,1 Total University - Law 1 137 347 181 30 5 1 702 - Economics 1 127 209 219 94 9 1 660 - Agriculture and
Forestry
1 137 298 419 143 12 1 1011 - Technical Sciences 5 323 577 697 235 25 3 1865 - Natural Sciences 0 37 71 86 25 0 0 219 - Pedagogic 2 98 285 166 47 15 0 613 - Medicine 2 164 432 184 38 0 2 822 - Other 2 105 146 202 79 14 3 551 Three year course in the Institute of Public Administration 0 24 39 48 18 3 0 132 Higher Professional Education 7 24 50 64 7 1 2 155 Full Secondary - gymnasium 67 121 509 704 120 68 20 1609 - business academy 164 375 1503 1639 327 168 45 4221 - other 322 562 1785 1718 408 174 119 5088 Secondary without State Examination 16 59 50 29 33 27 13 227 Primary 4 15 16 17 17 23 25 117
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