It started with the disappearance of the compulsory student union and ended with the university's governance and resources being on everyone's lips. A decade is coming to an end. Before it is time to begin the new decade, we think it is time to sum up the 2010s. A lot has happened and it is of course impossible to include everything. But we have chosen to start from a few issues that SFS has worked a lot on during the decade. Some have been revolutionary, most of it has happened gradually.
Equality
The academy is characterized by gender inequality. At the beginning of the 10s, 60 percent of first-year students were women. Yet women were a significant minority among professors. As many as four out of five professors were men. At every step in the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate education, to junior research positions and right up to professorship, the proportion of men increased. Women seemed to be given worse opportunities to qualify, or so they were valued. their work not as high as men's. In any case, women were screened out.
When the 10s began, there was a delegation for gender equality in higher education. The delegation was tasked with supporting initiatives and proposing measures that promote gender equality in higher education. They had been appointed in 2009 and presented their final report on their work in January 2011. The delegation proposed, among other things, that the higher education institution be tasked with integrating gender equality into its operations, and to increase gender equality among teachers by having each higher education institution set a target for the proportion of women when recruiting professors.
At the end of the decade, the proportion of women is still in the majority among first-year students and there are no signs of change. On the other hand, the proportion of professors who are women has increased, from 20 percent to 30 percent. Perhaps this is due to recruitment goals, perhaps to a greater awareness of how women are systematically disadvantaged, including in the distribution of work tasks and in the assessment of merit. Men are still in the large majority among professors, but it is possible to see a positive and ongoing development towards increased gender equality.
The study tool
For many, student funding is a necessity to be able to study at all. But even though it makes it possible to study, many still have problems getting enough student funding to cover all living expenses.
During the 10s, the student allowance has increased. At the beginning of the decade, the basic grant and loan amounted to a total of 8,958 SEK for four weeks. In 2019, that amount increased to 10,676 SEK. The increase has occurred in three stages: first, the student loan was increased twice, in 2011 and 2015, and second, the student allowance was increased in 2018. Although SFS has often been critical of the fact that the allowance part has not increased at the same rate as the loan part, many students have found it easier financially.
However, it is important to remember that many students have higher expenses than average. Especially when it comes to housing costs, there can be very large variations, with some paying two to three thousand kronor in rent while others pay more than half of the student allowance in rent. The fact that the student allowance has increased does not mean that all students have been given a sustainable financial situation. However, we believe that the discussion over the next decade may be more about how the student allowance should be adapted for an increasingly heterogeneous student group, where the students' ages, housing and life situations differ to an increasing extent.
Student housing
During the 10s, the housing shortage has become a recurring topic of conversation. The generation of young people who have tried to enter the housing market during the decade have often encountered great difficulties. Waiting times for student housing and other rental properties have become longer and longer. At the same time, the price of condominiums has skyrocketed. Entering the housing market has been difficult, especially for students who often have limited incomes. Many students are therefore forced to live in rented accommodation or move around on temporary or expensive second-hand contracts.
Every year, SFS has surveyed the housing situation in all of Sweden's university cities in connection with the start of the semester. The situation in each location has been classified on a three-point scale:
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Green, means that all new students can expect to receive secure accommodation with a reasonable rent within one month.
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Yellow means that all new students can expect to find accommodation within six months, but not necessarily at a reasonable rent.
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Red means that some new students will have to make do with temporary and insecure housing solutions for more than six months.
After following the development, we can see that some cities have actually taken the housing shortage for students seriously. They have worked to build more housing, either student housing or regular rental apartments that students can afford to live in. The number of cities where the housing market for students actually works has increased during the 10s.
Unfortunately, there has also been an increase in the number of cities where the housing shortage for students is really serious. It is often the larger cities that have the biggest problem with housing shortages, but some smaller towns are also affected. The fact that the housing shortage generally seems to have become more severe in the larger student cities means that the number of individual students facing a difficult housing situation has probably also increased even more in the cities that were already red-marked from the beginning.
Resources for education and research
University funding became a hot issue during the decade. As early as 2007, the Resources Inquiry submitted its final report with proposals for a new funding model for universities. However, the government did not proceed with the proposals, and the resource allocation system that had been introduced twenty years earlier was allowed to remain throughout the decade.
In 2017, a new inquiry was ordered, and in early 2019, the Steering and Resources Inquiry submitted its final report. The inquiry received a lot of attention, not least because it proposed replacing the current division between resources for research and resources for education with a combined appropriation. A combined appropriation would mean that higher education institutions would be allowed to redistribute resources between the two branches of activity. The government has not yet moved forward with this proposal.
When we summarize the decade, the division between research and education funding is one of the most interesting aspects to follow. If you do not take into account price and cost developments, you can see that both allocations are increasing. Higher education institutions' income for education has increased from just over 25 billion in 2010, to just over 30 billion at the end of the decade. This is an increase of 18 percent. During the same period, research funds increased from just under 32 billion to 43 billion, an increase of 36 percent. Research was thus the largest branch of activity already at the beginning of the decade, and almost ten years later it is clear that it is research that has been prioritized and expanded.
But talking about the resources of higher education institutions cannot be done without also mentioning the erosion. At the beginning of the decade, the Swedish Association of University Teachers and Researchers (SULF) published a report with calculations showing that the costs of higher education institutions increased at a faster rate than the appropriations. Even if there are no direct cuts in funding, the funding is sufficient each year for slightly smaller activities. This phenomenon is often referred to as erosion. A follow-up came in 2018, where SULF was able to determine that the erosion was still ongoing.In 2019, more people started to take up the erosion debate and highlight the problem that teachers are forced to increase the pace more and more. What we can see is that even though the universities' funding is increasing in terms of kronor and ören, it is not an actual expansion. The graph therefore only shows the difference between how much money is spent on research and education, that research has taken a toll.
The student unions!
A look back at the 10s would hardly be complete without mentioning the autonomy reform, which came into force in 2011. It had a major impact on the internal organisation of higher education institutions, allowing them to make more decisions for themselves. Among other things, it affected students' opportunities to be represented and participate in decisions that have a bearing on the education or the students' situation. Some were concerned that student influence would not work as before.
It was not surprising that many were concerned that the autonomy reform would negatively affect student influence. The autonomy reform came on the heels of another reform: the abolition of compulsory student union membership. The autonomy reform came into effect only six months after the abolition of compulsory student union membership.
For several hundred years, students had been required to join a student association in order to have the right to pursue studies and be awarded a degree. It had been investigated several times whether this was a desirable arrangement. There was not least criticism that compulsory membership restricted the free right of association.
On 1 July 2010, the requirement for compulsory membership in a student union for all students was abolished. Instead, students were given the opportunity to choose whether they wanted to organize themselves in student associations and, if so, which ones. Different associations could now coexist and compete for student union status.
The University Chancellor's Office was commissioned in 2016 to follow up on the reform. In the report Student Influence – Mapping and analysis of the conditions for student influence after the abolition of the compulsory union membership, UKÄ noted that many unions had problems with declining membership rates and difficulties in recruiting student representatives to exercise the desired influence. The student unions' income was also significantly lower than before. This was partly due to the loss of membership income. But one reason was also that the government grant that was introduced to finance student influence was much lower than what had previously been recommended.
The inquiry Freedom for students – on how the union and national compulsory education can be abolished (SOU 2008:11) proposed that the grant should be paid at 310 kronor per student. In reality, it was not much more than a third. Now in 2019, ten years later, the government grant amounts to about 120 kronor per full-time student.
You and I look forward.
There is a possibility that 2020 will be a year that will leave a positive mark on the next decade. This autumn, the government's research bill will be presented, which will present the direction for a large part of research policy in the coming years. We also look forward to seeing what happens with the Steering and Resource Inquiry.
Of course, we hope for a development towards better education that as many people as possible can take part in. This requires quality investments in higher education, combined with eliminating unnecessary obstacles. The housing shortage for students needs to disappear. We hope for development of the student financial aid system so that everyone can afford to focus wholeheartedly on their studies.
An important issue that has received increasing attention concerns student mental health. Students are overrepresented in mental health compared to other groups. Some progress has been made, but much remains to be done to reverse the trend.
But the future holds uncertainty. It is still difficult to predict how the increasingly polarized political landscape will affect higher education. The increased automation raises new questions about skills supply, what we are actually training for and what constitutes relevant education. We also see that issues of climate and sustainability have become increasingly relevant within the student movement and the debate about higher education. Our ambition is for SFS to continue working based on the rapidly changing conditions in society and bring about important changes for students and society at large.
See you in 2020.