The Ministry of Education, led by Minister Matilda Ernkrans, is currently preparing the new research bill. The bill, which will be presented next autumn, will guide the government's research policy for the next four years. Despite its framing name, the bill's proposals will have a major impact on students, doctoral students and the overall development of higher education.
Last week, SFS attended a seminar arranged by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, where Minister Ernkrans said that 300 different stakeholders have submitted their input with wishes on what the research bill should contain. Although there are similarities between the inputs, the texts are long and contain many specific wishes. For the sake of clarity, we have selected here the three most important aspects according to SFS:
SFS wants the government to:
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Proceed with the proposals in the Governance and Resource Review,
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Improve the working environment of doctoral students through better conditions and supervision,
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Promote complete academic environments, increase basic funding.
The governance and resource investigation, which was presented this spring, contained several proposals that we consider necessary. So far, several question marks remain – the research bill will show what the government wants to do to move forward with the proposals. STRUT proposes changes that would fundamentally change the governance of the university, and SFS hopes that they include as many aspects as possible.
Through the dialogue-based governance that STRUT proposes, higher education institutions would, for example, have to take greater responsibility for the under-dimensioning of doctoral education. It is a problem that the number of doctoral students has constantly decreased in recent years, while the number of students at the undergraduate and advanced levels has steadily increased. It goes without saying that the future supply of skills in academia is threatened if there is a shortage of individuals who stay. It is already difficult to recruit doctoral-level teachers in certain disciplines and if the trend does not reverse, the problem will affect more fields. If the government has clear goals and can follow them up in dialogue with higher education institutions, there is a chance that the trend can reverse.
The inquiry also proposes to remove the system that allocates grants based on student performance (HPR). The system as it stands today gives higher education institutions an incentive to lower the requirements for students because they need to approve a certain number of students to maximize the grants they are allocated. High-quality teaching is one of SFS's top priorities, which is why we hope the government removes HPR from the resource allocation.
For more information about STRUT, see sfs.se/strut.
Doctoral students' work environment is today characterized by uncertain conditions, high demands and destructive power structures. 9 percent of doctoral students are not employed, which should be addressed in the research bill. An unknown but significant proportion are what are called “shadow doctoral students”, who begin their doctoral education informally before they are admitted. In the intermediate position between student and professional activity, these doctoral students are sometimes completely without security systems such as insurance and fair conditions. SFS believes that the conditions for doctoral students are a priority area.
Furthermore, the government should support higher education institutions in their work for a better work environment, and the situation of doctoral students should be particularly highlighted so that they are not forgotten in the assignment. The inquiry into safer and more effective studies proposed that the Swedish Work Environment Authority should support higher education institutions in their responsibility for the rehabilitation of students; we want their responsibility to be more comprehensive. The Swedish Work Environment Authority should be able to oversee the entire chain, from preventive work against, among other things, mental illness, to rehabilitation, so that nothing ends up between the chairs.
Furthermore, we want the bill to show how the work to combat sexual harassment at our universities will continue. 19 percent of female doctoral students have been subjected to sexual harassment at their workplace. In addition to allocating resources to equality work, we see an opportunity to give the Discrimination Ombudsman guidelines to prioritize universities in their supervisory work.
Complete academic environments where research and teaching are closely linked is crucial for a developing knowledge society. In line with this ambition, we support the proposal in STRUT that higher education institutions should be allocated a combined budget for education and research. The reform would give higher education institutions with a heavy focus on education the opportunity to invest more in research, and research-intensive higher education institutions would be able to invest more in education.
Furthermore, a combined grant would make it easier to develop education together with research. For example, a smaller institution that receives resources for an investment in a certain area would have the opportunity to conduct a parallel research investment in the same area. The idea that teachers should research in the field they teach, and vice versa, is central.
In addition – and there is relatively broad agreement on this – the proportion needs to bass attack to research. Basic funding means funding that goes directly to higher education institutions and is not tied to time-limited projects. This would increase the long-term nature and stability of research, and make it easier for higher education institutions to minimize temporary employment. An increase in basic funding for research would also very likely improve the quality of education because research teachers would not be as pressured to opt out of educational activities in order to keep their employment, which often depends on the ability to attract external funds.
We know that some universities are concerned that this would mean that they would receive a smaller share of and thus have to close down parts of their current research activities. For this reason, we support STRUT's proposal that new or reallocated core resources be allocated in a way that ensures that the amount of research funding for each university does not change in the short term. Changing the resource allocation system is something that will take time to change undesirable behaviors in the long term and therefore STRUT's proposal should become a reality.
Some additional things we want are to improve protection against whistleblowers in cases of cheating or misconduct in research, open up innovation-supporting activities for alumni, and for the government to continue working on internationalization issues. Read the full recording here.