Polish President Andrzej Duda has appointed the Council for Higher Education, Science and Innovation. This is the ninth council established under the National Development Council.
“It is a council to look to the future. This is its fundamental task, although of course it will also be important to diagnose the current state: whether we are developing innovation well, whether the higher education reform properly shapes the model of Polish science”, said Andrzej Duda during the first meeting of the Council for Higher Education, Science and Innovation.
Answering the question whether the situation is good, the President said that if it were so, Poland’s science would not be reformed. He stressed that it is necessary to remember that the way of doing science requires systematic development, taking into account new trends and what science has invented itself.
The tasks of the Council for Higher Education, Science and Innovation will include in particular: preparing opinions and expert opinions for the President of the Republic of Poland; identifying current problems in higher education, science and innovation and analysing the identified problems; reviewing and analysing legal solutions and developing assumptions and drafts of presidential legislative initiatives concerning higher education, science and innovation; supporting the activities of the President of the Republic of Poland related to the implementation of presidential initiatives concerning higher education, science and innovation; creating a forum for debate and dialogue in the field of higher education, science and innovation; promoting activities and initiatives serving innovation in science and the economy.
As announced by the Deputy Head of the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland Piotr Ćwik, one of the first tasks facing the Council will be to assess the functioning of the Act on Higher Education, introduced by the then Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Science and Higher Education Jarosław Gowin. He said, that opinions about the need to change the legislation are reaching the Presidential Palace from various academic institutions.
Adrian Andrzejewski