On Wednesday morning, the government presented its budget bill for 2020. It is the second autumn budget of the mandate period, the first to be based on the points in the January agreement. The bill contains changes that will affect students next year, but it also provides a picture of what the direction of higher education policy may look like for the rest of the mandate period.
The most interesting thing for us is of course expenditure area 15 on student funding, as well as the part of expenditure area 16 that concerns universities and colleges. But issues about student health insurance, health and housing are also important. We have reviewed the budget bill for 2020 and summarized the changes that affect students at universities and colleges the most.
Comprehensive reforms of the higher education sector?
The development of higher education in Sweden today faces two important overarching questions: What should happen to the governance of the sector, and how is the so-called reform space used in the trade-off between more students or quality initiatives?
The Governance and Resources Inquiry was presented in February and the consultation period ended this summer. It is therefore relatively early and therefore important to understand that the government has not had time to proceed with the inquiry. However, it is unexpected that the government does not mention the Governance and Resources Inquiry at all when it describes the direction of next year's higher education policy. It also does not mention anything about the four-year research policy bill that will come next autumn. Overall, it is therefore very difficult to understand what the government wants to happen with higher education governance.
What is clear, however, is that the government is investing in the knowledge boost. The knowledge boost was initiated during the last term of office and includes, among other things, an expansion of the number of places in higher education. The costs for the new places in 2020 are expected to amount to SEK 348 million (which can be compared to approximately SEK 300 million disappearing from existing educational places in the form of efficiency requirements of almost one percent, but that is another story). Already in 2017 we wrote about the challenge of weighing the expansion of new places against investing more in the quality of the training places that already exist. One conclusion from the 2020 budget bill is that the government has not changed its focus, but continues to prioritize expansion.
Commitment to anti-cheating
Cheating on the university entrance exam is one of the education issues that has been highlighted most in the media in the past year. Laws and regulations surrounding the university entrance exam have been tightened and in 2018 the first legal cases regarding aiding and abetting cheating were decided. In parallel, work has continued on developing further measures and in July an investigation was published with more proposals. This investigation is currently out for consultation. For SFS, it remains to take a position on the proposals. However, we can already say that it is positive that more measures are being taken to prevent cheating. All paths into higher education must be legally secure. No one should have to be denied a place on an education because someone else has unfairly out-competed them.
In the 2020 budget, the government proposes to allocate SEK 15 million to the Swedish Council for Universities and Higher Education for their work on preventing cheating. The aim is to give the authority the space to implement future changes to combat cheating. We believe this is a good and prioritized initiative.
No support for student influence
It has now been a decade since the compulsory union membership was abolished. The change meant a major change in the conditions for student influence. Among other things, there were some clarifications about the mission of student unions. But perhaps the most noticeable change concerned the reduced income that resulted from the number of members paying membership fees decreasing. The investigation that formed the basis for the reform proposed that the state should provide a subsidy to ensure that student influence would continue to function at a reasonable level. Such a subsidy was also introduced, but it amounted to only a third of the recommended levels.
In 2017, the Swedish University of Science and Technology (UKÄ) proposed that the state grant for student influence should be tripled or quadrupled. The aim is for all students to have influence over their education, not least to ensure that the education is of high quality. This will be made more difficult if student unions cannot build up a sufficiently comprehensive operation to comply with their statutory mandate.
Due to the principles that guided the budget work during the 2018 transitional government, the state grant for student influence was not even calculated with price and salary increases, which was the case for basically all other appropriations. On that point, the calculation returns to normal in this year's budget, which is good. But the tripling or quadrupling that UKÄ recommended is not happening. The effect of this is that the activities of the student unions will suffer and thus the education will be of even lower quality compared to what it could have been.
Investment in housing for students
The government is proposing an increase in investment support for rental housing and student housing. The support goes to newly built housing on the condition that the housing is rented out at reasonable rents. SFS believes that the support is good, as it leads to lower rents in the otherwise expensive new production.
It can be mentioned here that the investment support was not included in the budget for 2019, i.e. the budget that was based on a proposal from KD and M and was drawn up in parallel with the prolonged government formation last autumn. The investment support was already reintroduced in the spring amending budget 2019. However, all the twists and turns led to there now being increased uncertainty about the future of the investment support. It has probably also led to developers not fully daring to trust that they will be able to apply for the support in future construction projects.
According to the proposal, investment support is to be increased by SEK 600 million, which corresponds to an increase of 25%. In addition, regulatory changes are expected to ensure that the support is put to better use and leads to more housing. This is a positive development for which we are very grateful. By increasing and developing the support, it becomes clearer that there is a long-term approach to investment support. We believe that this will strengthen confidence and lead to more housing for students.
Lifelong learning and compensation for development time
The government proposes to introduce a development period, which, like the previous year off, will give employees an opportunity to develop their skills or develop new skills. The aim is, among other things, to increase incentives for more people to switch to professions where there is a shortage of workers, which will be increasingly important in society's increasing rate of change. The proposal in the budget bill means that those who participate in development period will receive compensation from the state, which will therefore be compensation for the loss of income resulting from the absence of working time.
Another important issue to enable more people to participate in education later in life, however, is that the study grant is adjusted. One of the points in the January agreement is precisely about raising the age limit for the study grant. SFS sees this as an important reform. Among other things, the age limits need to be raised, and the maximum limit for how many years a student can receive study grant needs to be adjusted based on the fact that many education programs have become longer as a result of the Bologna reform.
Investments in student health are delayed
Students are a particularly affected group in society when it comes to growing problems with mental illness. Unfortunately, the budget bill does not contain any initiatives to reverse the trend. Here, the government has certainly shown that it wants to work more against mental illness, and work is currently underway to investigate whether the mission of student health can be developed and clarified. However, we lack a more comprehensive mission to develop proposals on how mental illness among students can be prevented and what causal factors are behind the students feeling so poorly. Hopefully, we will see more of this later in the mandate.
Another question, which has been long awaited, concerns the possibility of part-time sick leave for students. Today, students can be on sick leave at 50 percent if there are special reasons, which in practice has come to mean long-term or chronic illness. This means that someone who, for example, suffers from incipient mental illness, or has been ill but is on the way to recovery, cannot study part-time. Instead, they are allowed to continue at 100% study pace until they are so exhausted that they can be on sick leave full-time.
The fact is that during the last term of office, the government appointed an inquiry that already in February 2018 made proposals to introduce a more general possibility for students to be on sick leave part-time. The inquiry was referred in 2018 and since then the government has been working on preparing the issue. We had high hopes that sick leave would be included in this year's autumn budget. Especially since the proposals would not entail any increased costs for the state, it is strange that they are still being delayed...
Conclusion
In summary, there are few reforms that affect the university and the students. The government continues to choose to redistribute educational funding to more places on campus and at a distance without increasing the funding. In practice, this means an erosion. Finding an optimal distribution between quantity and quality is never easy, but it is important to avoid too one-sided prioritization. We need to review the university's governance system and we need to make it better for students during their education.
Higher education cannot be allowed to stagnate, it is now and right now that we need to invest more resources to solve societal challenges and prepare for the recession. This is not just about the students, it is about Sweden as a pioneer country.