Switzerland ‘losing attractiveness’ as government limits spending

Government funding restrictions on Swiss higher education and research could damage the country’s historic competitiveness, sector leaders have warned.

Luciana Vaccaro, president of the umbrella group Swiss Universities, told Times Higher Education that Switzerland’s strength in research and development “is not built by miracle – it’s built by the fact that we can attract talent to the country and can compete at a global level.”

“At the moment, we cannot compete,” she said. “We are losing attractiveness.”

In March, the Swiss federal council proposed an education and research budget for 2025 to 2028 of CHF29.2 billion (£26.2 billion). While this surpassed the 2021 to 2024 budget by CHF1.3 billion, Swiss Universities noted that “due to the expected inflation, there will be almost zero growth or even a real decrease in funding for universities during the funding period”.

Last month, the Swiss parliament approved a final budget that exceeded the original proposal by less than 0.3 per cent. “This small increase can be seen as a positive signal, but it is not enough to meet the real needs of the research community,” said Roberto Sala, head of strategy processes at the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

The federal council recently received proposals from an expert group, chaired by Serge Gaillard, aimed at reducing federal spending by up to CHF5 billion. Among the measures put forward in the Gaillard report were cuts of up to 10 per cent from the SNSF’s budget from 2027. These cuts, Dr Sala said, “would not only wipe out the small increase that has just been decided but would also drastically reduce the SNSF’s financial resources compared [with] the status quo”. He added: “Although no final decision has yet been taken, this scenario threatens to seriously weaken Swiss research.”

Angelika Kalt, director of the SNSF, told THE: “For years now, the demand for funding from the SNSF has been increasing significantly faster than the government funding.” Under the budget, she said, “the consequence will very clearly be that we will have further decline in the success rate for researchers, and other discussion will have to [address] whether there are specific funding instruments that need to be cut or abandoned”.

The budget comes at a time of existing vulnerability for Swiss science, Professor Kalt said, as a result of Switzerland’s continued exclusion from Horizon Europe. “Of course, there is much hope that we will soon be able to associate, but negotiations are difficult, and uncertainty prevails,” she said. “It is exactly this uncertainty that damages the standing of Switzerland in research and innovation.”

“With stagnation arriving at the national level also,” she continued, “we risk becoming considerably less attractive to bright minds inside and outside of Switzerland, which leads to a loss of quality in research at term.”

The ETH Domain – which comprises the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH Zurich and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, as well as several research institutes – has already implemented cutbacks, said Christopher Leuenberger, deputy head of communications for the ETH board.

“For the first time for more than 20 years, the ETH Domain [will] have a decrease in funding from one year to the next,” he said. The network has already “suspended certain investments in research on health, digitalisation, the environment and agriculture, and various institutions have imposed hiring freezes”.

“As student numbers at the two federal institutes of technology are growing much faster than funding, the supervision ratio is constantly deteriorating, and with it the quality of education.”

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com