An interesting tweak would be to significantly increase the bureaucracy cost of public health insurance and public educaction while decreasing religious and private ones.

As for the research system, idk if it fits with the VTM philosophy as it implies bigger changes but the idea would be to implement different reasearch buildings or different PMs, and each type would enhance their own tech spread : universities boost society techs, military academies boost military techs and polytechnical schools boost production techs.