There is a clear need to introduce a system that will produce a more appropriately and more diversely educated industrial work force, with life-long learning opportunities available to all, with no blind alleys and with closer collaboration between education institutions and industrial employers. The next area in which technical education, and specifically the technical universities, can support the revival of Czech industry is through research and technology transfer. Technology transfer is what ensures that research findings are translated into industrial production. Under socialism, the technical universities were primarily teaching institutions and research was concentrated in the Academy of Sciences and other research institutes. Nowadays, research funding from Czech and international sources is awarded on the basis of competitive bidding, and promotion for technical university staff is mainly on the basis of research, as at Western universities.
Research is an important and prestigious part of the work of the technical universities.
Under-funding of research has been a complaint, under socialism and under the market economy, in the Czech Republic and in most parts of the world. Research facilities at Czech technical universities have been limited, but not severely limited. A particular issue under socialism was the much lower performance and much lower availability of computers in the 1980s. The skills learned and the deep understanding of how computers can be made to perform are still being passed on in the Czech technical universities. It is necessary to create industries for the work force to work in, to ensure that educated workers find an appropriate niche in industry, that the research done at the universities is translated into industrial opportunities, and that the skills of the work force are regularly updated and developed to suit the fast-changing needs of modern industry.