Staff development programmes, which universities should be providing for their own staff and for the staff of other institutions, improve people's skills and raise morale. Czech universities are aware of the need to offer such services, but cannot yet claim to have implemented them all. Many in the Czech academic community will sigh when they are told that much change in higher education remains to be done, across many areas of university activity. There are also important questions of attitude. The relationship between professor and student, in too many cases, remains that of a stiff and stern old professor lecturing away, talking at the student, not with him.
Academics accept little responsibility for the welfare of students.
They often claim that high failure rates in examinations are evidence of the high standard of the course, and fail to consider that the teacher's poor presentation of the course may have contributed to the failures. While the maintenance of high standards is important, student attrition and failure should receive more sympathetic attention. A difficult generational change will need to take place in these universities over the next decade. Due to very low salaries, the universities have failed to recruit young staff in the past ten years. Younger staff have been leaving the universities en masse to earn more money in the private sector.