The four MPs within the 'Ordinary People' faction attached to the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party won't endorse the across-the-board introduction of tuition fees for part-time university and college studies as proposed by the coalition, the group's leader Igor Matovič said on Thursday, March 3.
Ordinary People's fellow coalition parties have been informed about its stance, he said, expressing hope that by the time the coalition's draft is debated at a parliamentary session in March the coalition will have come to an agreement on the issue. The faction has two proposals, said Matovič, outlining one of them. The world's top universities provide scholarships to students who post the best results, while charging tuition fees to those with inferior marks, he asserted. Matovič advocates the idea of charging roughly 20 percent of students, those with the worst study results, for their courses.
The group's second proposal will only be made public after Ordinary People's coalition partners are updated on it, he added, as quoted by the TASR newswire.
The faction opposes the idea of instituting fees for part-time study on the grounds that this goes against pledges that it made to its voters. "We're dead sure that if we made the introduction of sweeping fees possible, universities would be strongly inclined to educate an even larger number of part-time students than now, as this would provide a compelling source of income for them," he said, adding that such a measure would damage the quality of college or university education.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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