Can research policy contribute to higher education becoming more relevant, to students learning more and even to students feeling better? So, how? And is the government's research policy effective in achieving those goals?
Last Monday, Helene Hellmark Knutsson (S) presented the government's research policy bill. SFS has already given some overall comments on the bill. Here we supplement with more detailed comments on the parts of the government's research policy that will affect Sweden's students the most.
Charlotta Tjärdahl (SFS vice chair) and Fredrik Lindeberg (SFS doctoral student committee chair)
Research connection in higher education
The Government highlights the need to increase the research connection in higher education (p. 53ff). To promote this, they propose in the bill that each higher education institution should be guaranteed at least SEK 12 in research grants for each full-time student (pp. 000-58), precisely to provide more resources for research as teaching increases at one higher education institution. Until now, the corresponding amount has been SEK 59, so the proposal is a noticeable increase. The Government also expresses an ambition to implement more comprehensive changes to the resource allocation system for both education and research in the slightly longer term (pp. 8-000). At present, however, it is unclear whether and how that change would affect the research connection.
SFS affirms the demand that there should be a close connection between education and research, and thinks that it should be taken more seriously. The goal should be that there is a good balance between research and education at all higher education institutions. But for this to be achieved, it is important that all teaching teachers can also conduct research. At the same time, it is important that even the most prominent researchers at Swedish higher education institutions spend some time on education. But none of this is the case today, and a solution is largely about how the various appropriations are distributed.
Increasing the research grant in proportion to the number of students means that the higher education institutions that have the weakest research connection will be able to conduct more research. This change is positive, primarily because a large part of these research funds should go to people who currently conduct a lot of teaching. But the government is still not going all the way to strengthen the research connection. One of the most notable parts of the research bill is about an increase in the basic appropriations by 1,3 billion. But instead of distributing these grants in a way that clearly promotes the balance between research and education, the government intends to distribute them based on the university's publications, citations, external research grants and collaboration (p. 57). With such a distribution, the grants can be assumed to continue to be concentrated on the higher education institutions that already conduct the most research. It does not promote the research connection in the educations where it is currently weakest. Nor does it strengthen the role of education at the higher education institutions that are most research-heavy. The research bill is formulated with a ten-year perspective, and during that time there is room to do much more.
Merit employment, but without pedagogy
The Government writes that the employment and career paths after the doctoral degree are of crucial importance for the higher education institutions to be able to "meet their needs for competent staff who can contribute to the quality of the business and future competitiveness" (pp. 72-73). As the merit positions are an important path towards a future career within the academy, it is important that they are attractive and accessible to the most competent applicants, from other higher education institutions in Sweden as well as internationally. The Government therefore believes that merit appointments should be more uniformly regulated nationally, and that they should be appointed after more open announcements (pp. 73-74). In this way, recruitment will be more accessible to more applicants, which is expected to lead to a better selection. In addition, it is proposed that the number of merit-based employment should increase, in order to give more people a clearer path forward in their careers.
SFS has previously emphasized the value of clarifying young researchers' career paths and increasing security and legal certainty. SFS has also emphasized the importance of weaving in pedagogical competence and development as obvious parts of an academic career. SFS has several demands for improvements in pedagogy's anchoring in higher education. Firstly, all teaching teachers should be given the opportunity to undergo pedagogical training. Secondly, pedagogical skills should be rewarded, for example by taking greater account of pedagogical merits in employment, salary setting and in other relevant contexts. Thirdly, the government should commission an authority to coordinate higher education pedagogical issues and promote pedagogical development. Research policy, which of course sets the framework for how a career in academia should be designed, should take these three requirements into account.
It is very good that the career paths for young researchers are becoming safer and more uniform. But already in a response to the Researcher Career Inquiry, SFS also pointed out how important it is to let the pedagogical competence development become an obvious part of the merit employment. How the merit appointments are designed, and what counts as merit, has, as I said, a clear impact on how strong the connection is between research and education - and this is something that the government intends to protect. But if the government wants to clarify and improve researchers' opportunities to make a career, and at the same time is serious about strengthening the connection between research and education, it cannot ignore the importance of pedagogy. Pedagogical competence is so important for every person engaged in education, that a research policy that strives to bring research and education closer together, must answer the question of how doctoral students and young researchers (and for all experienced researchers) should acquire pedagogical skills. . Despite this, higher education pedagogy is not mentioned in a single word in the entire bill.
The doctoral students' conditions, security and financing
The Government proposes to abolish the education grant (pp. 68-70). The hope is that more people will instead get doctoral positions. The Government intends to continue to allow scholarships as a form of funding, despite the recommendation from the Research Career Inquiry being to abolish them. However, the ambition is to reduce the number of scholarship-financed doctoral students (pp. 71-72). In addition, the government states that they intend to follow up on the proposals set out in the Researcher Career Inquiry. Among other things, it is proposed that a scholarship-financed doctoral student may not have a lower income than the university's employed doctoral students, and that they must normally be employed by the university no later than when three years remain of the education. In addition, the government highlights the changes in the merit appointments as part of making doctoral students' situation more secure (pp. 72-74). Furthermore, the government intends to reduce the number of fixed-term employment, which is assumed to reduce the precarious employment for those who have recently received a doctorate (p. 75).
SFS has already previously commented positively on several of the Researcher Career Inquiry's proposals. It is good that the education grant is abolished, as it may mean a step towards SFS's wish that all doctoral students should be employed from the first day of their education. Of course, it is also good that the conditions are improving for scholarship-financed doctoral students. SFS wants all doctoral students from the first day to be employed for the entire study period, and that all doctoral students should have full-fledged student social security. In the Research Career Inquiry, there was also a proposal to phase out scholarships as a form of funding in the long term, and SFS was also in favor of this.
Several of the government's changes are thus in line with SFS's views, which is positive. However, it is a pity that the government chooses to keep scholarships as a form of financing.
Summary words
The government proposes certain measures to strengthen the connection between research and education. With a ten-year perspective, however, the proposals are too cautious. The same applies to the doctoral students' security and conditions, which will admittedly be better, but which, despite the proposals, will leave some to be desired. There, it is mainly the choice to keep scholarships as a form of financing that rubs.
With regard to the proposals to develop the meritorious employment, this should also lead to certain improvements. But it is a pity, and feels out of place, not to integrate the pedagogical competence development in the form of employment that should aim at new researchers being able to establish themselves as both researchers and teachers. On the whole, it is remarkable that the government has completely omitted questions about pedagogy in the research policy bill. Not least, this means that the government is missing an opportunity to improve and broaden the recruitment of future researchers.
The same feeling of "good, but not good enough", we find elsewhere in the bill. For example, the government wants to improve gender equality in academia. But the only concrete proposal is to introduce a goal to half of all newly recruited professors should be women. In fourteen years. Why not do more? Why not demand that more recruitment processes be anonymised as far as possible, when we know that women's merits are valued lower? Why not increase research funding for the female-dominated subject areas that are today strongly dominated by education? Why not anything more?
On the whole, we can from a student perspective summarize the research bill in one word: lukewarm.
Charlotta Tjärdahl, Vice President of the Swedish National Union of Students
Fredrik Lindeberg, chairman of the Swedish National Union of Students' doctoral student committee