Irregularities in the Funding of Higher Education

• Conclusions
• Response by the minister
• Afterword by the Court of Audit

Conclusions

On the basis of its review, the Court of Audit concludes that the Ministry of Education's self-cleansing audit has not yet been completed. As the Ministry itself found, the information obtained from the questionnaires completed by the various institutions is insufficiently reliable. Certain answers are unclear or incomplete.

An external committee of experts approached by the ministers did make proposals to improve legislation, but only pronounced generally on the cases in which there was some doubt as to the regularity of the institutions' actions. The Court of Audit believes that such cases must be categorised as either regular or irregular. A pronouncement is still needed in cases where no judgment was possible due to lack of information. To this day, the Ministry of Education has failed even to investigate those cases in which a breach of legislation was established. It is unclear whether misuse or improper use of legislation has taken place in cases other than those reported in the questionnaires. Here, too, further investigation is necessary.

It thus remains unclear whether expenditure on higher education has been regular. The Court of Audit has therefore been unable to get to the bottom of the matter, as requested by the House of Representatives. At present, it is impossible to calculate accurately how much excess money institutions have received, or what shortfalls there have been. The Court of Audit accordingly recommends that the State Secretary for Education ensure that the self-cleansing audit is completed in the foreseeable future.

The Court of Audit also notes that the Ministry of Education has failed to supervise the investigated sectors of education properly. Departments within the Ministry have paid too little attention to the risk of misuse and improper use, despite repeatedly receiving signs that irregularities were occurring. Policy departments and the Ministry's audit department have showed little interest, so that much is still left to the initiative of institutions' own accountants. The Court of Audit believes that the policy departments should have been much more alert and that the audit department should have investigated these risks more thoroughly.

The Court of Audit's findings confirm the diagnosis reached earlier by the Ministry of Education itself, but to which - entirely in line with the diagnosis - no follow-up was given: the middle stage of the policy cycle was deemed sound, but policy was found to be weak at the "ante and post" stages. Identification, risk analysis, evaluation and implementation remain in urgent need of improvement.

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Response by the minister

In her response, the Minister of Education, speaking on behalf of the State Secretary for Agriculture, concluded that the self-cleansing audit had not got to the bottom of the matter, but rejected criticism of the exercise. She postulated that the audit had never been intended to ascertain the scale of the irregularities and claimed that this was in fact the task of the Court of Audit. The self-cleansing audit was allegedly only partially intended to chart and evaluate the extent to which institutions could manipulate funding regulations. From this point of view, the Minister regarded this investigation, including the activities of the external committee, as complete and successful. According to the Minister, the task that the Court of Audit believes should have been carried out in the framework of the self-cleansing audit, namely identifying and eliminating the categories "no judgment possible" and "amber" (as opposed to "red"/"green", meaning that it was unclear whether or not an action had conflicted with the spirit or letter of the law) will be tackled shortly in the shape of a tighter audit system and periodic funding talks with the institutions. She also announced a plan of action.

The Minister endorsed the findings and conclusions of the review carried out by the Court of Audit at the request of the House of Representatives. She endorsed the criticism of deficiencies in supervision and monitoring policy and announced that she would be adopting the Court of Audit's recommendations.

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Afterword by the Court of Audit

The Court of Audit welcomes the Minister's undertaking to improve supervision and monitoring. As far as the self-cleansing audit is concerned, it remains of the opinion that the job is not finished and that the Minister's account of the investigation's objective does not accord with what her predecessor told the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives will only be able to judge the nature and scale of the irregularities properly once the Minister has carried out her responsibilities on this point and has listed, investigated and judged the irregularities per institution. The Court of Audit sees no other way of getting to the bottom of the matter. It is concerned about the progress of the investigation and at the proposed method of dealing with the irregularities.

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