Shadow budgets and the general exercise period in 2024

The general motion period, i.e. the period during which members of the Riksdag may submit motions on all issues that the Riksdag can decide on, ran this year between 10 September and 4 October. 

During this time, the opposition parties Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Center Party and the Green Party also submit their budget proposals for 2025. These "shadow budgets" are a response to the budget proposal that the government together with the Sweden Democrats presented at the end of September. SFS has previously commented the government's budget bill

In this blog post, we go through the opposition's higher education policy, focusing on spending areas 15 Study funds and 16 Education and university research, and examine how it differs from the government's.

Summary

The government's budget means a reduction in student union funding starting in 2026. Among the opposition parties, only the Left Party invests in student unions with SEK 30 million already in 2025. The Social Democrats mark their distance from the reduction and the Green Party emphasizes that it is important to have secured funding. The funding of the student unions is not mentioned at all by the Center Party. 

Both the Left Party and the Green Party are particularly investing in increasing the quality and reducing the cuts in higher education. The Social Democrats restore the government's reduction of the higher education institutions' ceiling amount, but do nothing to counteract the erosion of compensation per student.

Two of the parties, the Center Party and the Green Party, are increasing funding to CSN to strengthen the handling of the transition study support. 

Figure: Investments in higher education and study funds in the parties' shadow budgets. Some budget items may include more forms of education than university education. If university education is included, we have included them in their entirety. *The Social Democrats propose an increase in Studiemedel by 774000, but the background text shows that it refers to Study Aid.

The Social Democrats

The Social Democrats' budget proposal only contains information for 2025, unlike the government's budget, which always contains forecasts over the next three years (that is, 2025, 2026 and 2027). It is therefore not shown in the table for grant 2:67 Special contributions within the higher education sector (where the student unions' state grant is found) whether the Social Democrats intend to keep the government's upcoming reduction in the grant to the student unions from 2026 or not. On the other hand, it is clear from the motion for Expenditure area 16 Education and university research that the Social Democrats want to "clearly mark our distance against reducing support for student influence in the coming years". 

In its budget, the government reduces the ceiling amounts for a number of higher education institutions, which the Social Democrats restore in their budget proposal with the aim "that the number of educational places should not decrease". The Social Democrats' budget proposal thus means SEK 100 million more for the universities. On the other hand, the compensation amounts per student are the same, which still means erosion. 

State incentives in the form of production support are proposed for, among other things, student housing. In total, the Social Democrats are investing SEK 8 billion with the aim of getting housing construction started.

An investment is also being made so that students and young people can use public transport free of charge during the summer. 

Vänsterpartiet

The Left Party proposes a strengthening of the student unions' funding by SEK 30 million in 2025. This would mean an increase in funding by just over 55 percent to a level corresponding to approximately SEK 270 per full-year student and doctoral student. The amount is still lower than what UKÄ proposed in the report The student influence from 2017, but the proposal would still mean a significant strengthening of the student unions and would enable better student influence and strengthened work with educational development and quality review.

In terms of education funding, the Left Party proposes a quality boost of SEK 320 million, which refers to increased compensation amounts per full-year student. They also propose targeted investments to expand medical education and nursing education as well as librarian education. For the expansion of medical education, funds are also allocated to the regions for internships. In addition, an investment of SEK 20 million is being made to UHR to keep down the fees for the university entrance exam and promote the possibility for people with disabilities to write the university entrance examination.

All in all, the Left Party allocates SEK 320 million more than the government in 2025 for study funds. It is partly aimed at financing an expansion of the number of places, partly because the Left Party opposes the government's lowering of the higher grant level. They also propose to introduce an opportunity to write off student debts for nursing graduates who choose to live and work in sparsely populated regions and set aside SEK 39 million for this.

Furthermore, the Left Party proposes to increase the basic funding for research by SEK 500 million.

The Left Party also wants to set aside SEK 20 million for scholarships earmarked for students in Palestine.

Center Party

The Center Party neither mentions nor changes the government's upcoming reduction in student union funding. 

Grant 2:64 Special expenses within universities and colleges on the other hand, will be increased by SEK 50 million in 2025 and SEK 100 million in the following years to strengthen teacher training and especially that more people with other professional backgrounds should obtain teaching qualifications.

In order to strengthen CSN in the processing of the transition study support, the Center Party increases the grants by SEK 50 million per year 2025-2027. 

The Green Party

The Green Party highlights the problem with the erosion of funding for higher education and therefore proposes 556,5 million in 2025, 564,9 million in 2026 and 579,2 million in 2027 distributed to all higher education institutions for the abolition of the productivity deduction. In addition to this, the Green Party proposes a reinforcement for higher studies and research with SEK 368 million in 2025, which is distributed between grants within 2:3 to 2:67 and 3:1 to 3:8. 

The Green Party also makes some targeted investments in specific educations. They want to set aside SEK 50 million annually in 2025-2027 for further training of teachers. They also want to add SEK 20 million to compensate VFU costs for medical education at Örebro University, which is currently not given the same funding as medical education at other universities. 

As far as study funds are concerned, the Green Party wants to increase the contribution part by SEK 300 a month, which would cost a total of SEK 1,3 billion per year. In addition, SEK 50 million is set aside for CSN to speed up the processing time of the new transition study support.

The Green Party proposes no change to the student unions' funding for 2025. However, it is clear from the motion Education and research for a sustainable society that "The Green Party maintains the importance of secured funding for the country's student unions and intends to secure the students' democratic influence in the universities in the long term." 

Students are mentioned 115 times in the motions of members of the Riksdag

In addition to immersing ourselves in the shadow budgets of the opposition parties, we have also gone through the motions that the members of parliament have submitted. 

Of total 3174 exercises so 115 explicitly mentions us students (however, this simple hitting does not capture all motions affecting students). 

There are differences between the parties. The Left Party is the party that raises the students in the largest proportion of its motions, followed by the Green Party. The Liberals and Moderates are the parties that mention students most rarely in terms of number of motions.

The Left Party 14,9% (11 of 74 motions)

The Green Party 7,5% (12 out of 160 motions)

Center Party 5,4% (17 out of 312 motions)

The Sweden Democrats 3,7% (26 of 701 motions)

The Social Democrats 3,3% (26 of 795 motions)

The Christian Democrats 2,1% (6 of 286 motions)

The Liberals 1,9% (1 of 54 motions)

Moderates 1,7% (14 out of 800 motions)

The Student Union is mentioned in a total of 13 motions, of which 10 mention the Swedish National Union of Students.