“The statements made by the Minister of Science and Higher Education failed to include any specific commitment to raising the budget of the NCN, whose steady decrease has been one of the chief threats to the development of science in Poland”, reads a statement from Professors Jan Ostrowski and Marek Konarzewski, who appealed for more funding for the agency.
The presidents of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAAS) and the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) have expressed their approval following a statement by the Minister of Science and Higher Education, Dariusz Wieczorek, who promised to increase state spending on research and higher education in 2024, including higher wages for researchers and the administrative personnel of universities and research institutes, and announced an increase in funding for PAS institutes. However, they also pointed out that “the statement failed to include any specific commitment to raising the budget of the NCN”.
The success rate, i.e. the proportion of applicants who win a grant, in recently concluded NCN calls dropped to just a few percent. “Many good research projects cannot be completed and the intellectual effort that has gone into their preparation goes to waste”, argue the two presidents. They also point out that the steady decrease in the NCN budget “has been one of the chief threats to the development of science in Poland”, and appeal, on behalf of the members of both Academies, for an increase in funding “to a level that would allow 25% of submitted research projects to be funded”.
The research community has been supporting the NCN in its campaign for additional budget resources for a long time. Most recently, in December 2023, a group of MNiSW scholarship winners issued an appeal to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Science and Higher Education, in which they requested a revision of the resources allocated to the NCN “as the flagship institution that ensures politically independent, merit-based funding of scientific research”. Over the last few months, support for the NCN has also been voiced by the winners of ERC grants, awards and scholarships from the Foundation for Polish Science, and the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science programme.
During a debate on 21 December 2023, Andrzej Domański, Minister of Finance, declared that the new state budget will include resources for the “important purpose” of increasing the budget of the National Science Centre.
More about the financial needs of the NCN and the researchers it supports.