DEBATE, the article was published in Curie 6/10-2020. Read the article at tidningencurie.se here
Research and education belong together. Education needs to be included in the research bill. Then we can raise the quality of both activities and thereby make Sweden an even stronger industrial, welfare and knowledge nation. This is what the Swedish National Union of Students writes ahead of the government's upcoming research bill.
After the recent debate on higher education policy has been preoccupied with the issue of the Swedish National Entrance Examination and the impact of the corona pandemic on higher education, it is now time to take a step back and think long-term. Research and higher education are interconnected in many ways, and if we create a bottleneck, it risks hampering both activities. It is therefore very important that education is not forgotten in the research and innovation bill.
Don't forget STRUT
It has now been more than a year and a half since the Steering and Resource Inquiry (STRUT) presented its final report. Our hope is to see many of the proposals in the research bill, although we would have preferred to see a coherent higher education policy bill. In particular, we would like to highlight the importance of eliminating or reducing the importance of full-year achievements and a combined or more flexible allocation for research and education.
Year-round performance does students a disservice. What would lead to teachers spending more time helping students pass their courses does not work in practice. When funding per student is constantly decreasing, it rather leads to reduced requirements. Reduced requirements in turn lead to lower pedagogical support for students, which creates a vicious circle. This risks becoming especially common during the pandemic, with more students, greater productivity deductions and a lack of saved performance from previous years. Year-round performance also counteracts broadened recruitment because higher education institutions have financial incentives to attract those who come from home with a history of studying.
In order for higher education to continue to maintain a high standard, we demand that the system of full-year achievements be removed or have its importance greatly reduced.
STRUT proposes a combined allocation for research and education. These activities are interrelated and how teachers and researchers allocate their time should be determined by the higher education institutions' own governance systems, not by politicians. Some politicians have expressed a fear that one activity risks eating up the other at certain higher education institutions. This risk should definitely be followed up, but on the whole we see that the benefits outweigh the costs. A combined allocation also enables more collaboration with the surrounding society. During a crisis like the one we are currently in, this is more important than ever. We therefore want to see a combined or at least a more flexible allocation for higher education and research.
Linking research applications to higher education
Many institutions and teachers rely on funds from state research councils to get by. Currently, there is no given connection to higher education in the projects that these research councils grant. One consequence of this is that many research projects end up in the sand instead of being incorporated into education and then transferred to the surrounding society via the students. This becomes a short-term view of research.
We want to see that all applications must explain how the intended project or its results can be linked to an education. Furthermore, pedagogical qualifications should be taken into account when decisions are made about who should be awarded project funds. This is a quality issue for both research and higher education.
Dimensioning of doctoral education
We are very concerned about the statistics presented by UKÄ earlier this year, which show that the number of admissions to the country's postgraduate programmes continues to decline. This is despite significantly more students in undergraduate education and more research resources over the past 20 years.
Since 1999, the number of registered doctoral students per registered undergraduate students has decreased by around 30 percent. Since 1999, the number of registered doctoral students per inflation-adjusted krona spent on research and postgraduate education has decreased by around 40 percent. Since 2006, the proportion of the population who started postgraduate education at the latest at the age of 30 has decreased by 60 percent (from 1,7 percent to 0,7 percent) (UKÄ statistical database 2020). We do not know exactly why this is happening, but changed employment conditions and a short-term focus on recruiting postdocs and professors have been raised as possible reasons.
The shortage of research graduates is already a major problem in both the humanities and teacher education. There is a great risk that it will spread to other areas of education unless the trend reverses. We expect the upcoming bill to address this and come up with proposals and measures to achieve a change in trend.
In summary, we see that much can be done to strengthen the connection between research and education. This will raise the quality of the entire university's operations and, in the long run, contribute to Sweden becoming an even stronger industrial, welfare and knowledge nation.
Simon Edström, Chairman of the Swedish Federation of Social Sciences
Linn Svärd, Vice President of SFS
Pil Maria Saugmann, Chair of the SFS Doctoral Student Committee