Higher Education Reform Concerning the Employment of University Teachers in Public Higher Education Institutions (Chosen Issues)

The recently amended Higher Education Act of 27th July 2005 introduced as to the principle of carrying out the recruitment for vacant posts of university teachers via a competition, however, it did not solve all problems connected with it. It, however, does not normalize detailed recruitment procedures for vacant posts in public higher education institutions in the range of carrying out the qualification procedures for university teachers in the form of a competition. This act also does not contain the premise of the spotless opinion or a similar premise in the catalogue of statutory requirements defined in art. 109 passage 1. Difficulties in the application of this premise in practice should not, however, induce the legislator to liquidate this premise, which should exist in the act next to the premise concerning the lack of being sentenced for the intentional offence, because these premises complement each other. At present only the statutes of the public higher education institution may contain this kind of premise. Limitations in the access to the posts of university teachers in public higher education institutions are manifested in the construction by the legislator of the detailed employee duties not infrequently formulated as prohibitions in order to counteract corruption and other pathological phenomena. The new regulation art. 118 passage 7 of the Higher Education Act states that in the public higher education institution a relation of the direct official subordination between the university teacher and his/her spouse, relative or kinsman up to the second degree or the person remaining in the adrogation, care or guardianship relation, employed in the same public university cannot occur. It is, however, difficult to explicitly infer from the legal regulations what effects are triggered off by the violation of the prohibition defined in art. 50 of the amended Higher Education Act and in practice the compliance with this prohibition can look different in respective organizational structures. The amended Higher Education Act in art. 129 passage 7 quite accidently also predicts the catalogue of limitations in commencing extra work by a university teacher. Besides, it should be possible for university teachers to commence extra work under the condition that they properly fulfill their duties in the basic workplace and that it does not pose hazard to important business of the basic employers, what is still not taken into consideration by the amended Higher Education Act