“The amendment to the 2024 budget bill, as announced by the future government and parliament, is our last call to prevent a serious collapse of the Polish science and higher education system through changes in spending, especially on subsidies for the NCN”, reads an open letter addressed to the public authorities by a group of Polish researchers.
The signatories to the appeal point out that the issues of science and higher education have been almost completely side-lined in public debate and in statements by major political parties, and “the current challenges facing research and the material situation of researchers are becoming increasingly dramatic”.
They also emphasise that “the state of basic research is one of the main factors that determine a country’s societal and civilizational growth” and appeal for a NCN budget increase. “Given the size of the Polish budget, we believe that our call to restore the status quo ante, where the National Science Centre was able to fund 25-20% of projects submitted under its calls, is not only necessary, but also realistic”, they argue.
The open letter was started by Prof. Dariusz Rakusa from the University of Wrocław, Prof. Marek Figlerowicz from the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, PAS, and Prof. Przemysław Wojtaszek from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
Sign the appeal here.
The state budget for science is 25 billion zlotys. Only 5.6% of that sum goes toward funding NCN projects.
In 2015, the state subsidy for NCN’s research-funding operations equalled 871 million zlotys. Three years later, it went up to 1.226 billion. In 2022 and 2023, it stabilised at 1.392 billion. This means that while the agency’s budget grew by more than 40% between 2015 and 2018, between 2018 and 2023, it only increased by a meagre 13%. Over the same period, the total budget requested by researchers in NCN calls rose by 59%, from 5.4 billion in 2018 to c. 8.6 billion in 2022.
Due to the NCN’s frozen budget, the success rate in recently concluded calls was 8.06% for OPUS and 10.73% for PRELUDIUM. This is the lowest proportion of funded projects since the NCN was founded.
Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, NCN Director, has recently addressed the need for greater funding in an interview published in “Forum Akademickie”.