EDITORIAL: New universities – what next?

One could not have planned better for the announcement of the island’s three colleges being declared universities to coincide with the EU and southern Mediterranean finance ministers’ meeting who set a target for growth and jobs creation.

Both decisions are a milestone in the development of Cyprus into a truly proactive services-oriented economy that will start setting the trend as opposed to reactively following the market signals.

But the fundamental issue discussed by the Euro-Med ministers was structural reform, stability, and economic prosperity, “in the spirit of the Barcelona process.”

This means that ways must be found for the new universities, together with the state University of Cyprus and the new Cyprus University of Technology in Limassol, to receive funds for research and development, while offering great employment opportunities with competitive wages.

Cyprus is one of the poorest performers in this field with one of the lowest rates of capital directed to R&D as per the island’s GDP rate and this figure can at last be changed drastically.

In order for the three colleges to secure their licenses they needed to transform themselves into non-profit institutions, which begs the question, “why should anyone invest when there is no financial return?”

Obviously there are two sources of funds. The first is the existing pool of European grants that is already being tapped, and the second is the private sector, that must be given incentives to inject thousands if not millions into these universities in the form of tax-free grants, scholarships or complete wings named after corporate sponsors.

Businesses will benefit from their share of new theories, services or products that will come out of these universities, while they may even gain valuable education and research material that will improve the productivity and performance of their own human resources.

On the other hand, judging from the generous packages that our own Finance Minister has been dishing out recently, is it not time that investments in education and research becomes a valid tax incentive? If this is achieved, private companies would be willing to pump millions into these institutions if they only knew that they will have something to get in return.