Criticism

Court of Audit scrutinized FH Vorarlberg

Who finances what here? The Court of Audit is critical.(Bild: FH Vorarlberg)

The Court of Audit has audited the management of the universities of applied sciences in Burgenland and Vorarlberg. One of the findings was that the funding of the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences was less transparent than that of the Burgenland University of Applied Sciences. The state of Vorarlberg is therefore recommended to be more transparent with regard to state funding.

The audited period covered the years 2018 to 2021 and included the governing bodies, the teaching division, the deployment of staff, the management and control function of the respective owners and the Ministry of Science as well as the financial situation. FH Burgenland was wholly owned by Landesholding Burgenland, while FH Vorarlberg was directly owned by the state of Vorarlberg.

Difficulties
The 2016 amendment to the Healthcare and Nursing Act provided for the transfer of training for the upper-level service for healthcare and nursing from schools to a Bachelor's degree course at UASs. Unlike the other federal states, Burgenland and Vorarlberg offered training for the upper-level civil service in parallel in both training tracks for as long as legally possible. However, according to the auditors, this made it more difficult to establish the FH degree course in healthcare and nursing at the two universities of applied sciences.

A further point of criticism concerns the state funding: while the state grant to the FH Burgenland was based on the number of occupied study places, the state funding of the FH Vorarlberg was based on the budgeted requirements. The state parliament's decision in 1997 to cover the annual operating losses of the FH Vorarlberg created a "basically unlimited liability risk" for the state, according to the audit report.

Several sources of money bubble up
In Burgenland, the state funds came directly from the state budget. This is different in Vorarlberg, where there are also donations from illwerke vkw AG, a state-owned company. Another difference: unlike the FH Burgenland, the FH Vorarlberg received indirect funding by charging rents that were not in line with the market. Specifically, in 2022, FH Burgenland had to pay an average rent per square meter that was around five times higher than that of FH Vorarlberg. The financial resources attributable to the state of Vorarlberg were therefore not easy to determine, and the financing of the FH Vorarlberg was less transparent than that in Burgenland.

The state of Vorarlberg should therefore take measures to ensure the necessary transparency of the financing of the FH Vorarlberg through funds attributable to the state, according to the audit report.