The general motion period, that is, the period during which members of parliament may submit motions on all issues that the Riksdag can decide on, ran this year between September 10 and October 4.
During this time, the opposition parties Social Democrats, Left Party, Center Party and Green Party will also submit their budget proposals for 2025. These “shadow budgets” are a response to the budget bill that the government, together with the Sweden Democrats, presented at the end of September. SFS has previously commented government budget proposal.
In this blog post, we review the opposition's higher education policy with a focus on spending areas 15 Student Funding and 16 Education and University Research, and examine how it differs from the government's.
Conclusion
The government's budget involves a reduction in student union funding from 2026. Among the opposition parties, only the Left Party is investing in student unions with SEK 30 million already in 2025. The Social Democrats are expressing their distance from the reduction and the Green Party emphasizes that it is important to have secured funding. The funding of student unions is not mentioned at all by the Center Party.
Both the Left Party and the Green Party are investing in increasing quality and reducing cuts in higher education. The Social Democrats are restoring the government's reduction in the university cap, but are doing nothing to counteract the erosion of per-student compensation.
Two of the parties, the Centre Party and the Green Party, are increasing funding to CSN to strengthen the processing of the transition study support.
Figure: Investments in higher education and student funding in the parties' shadow budgets. Some budget items may include more forms of education than higher education. If higher education is included, we have included them in their entirety. *The Social Democrats propose an increase in Student Aid by 774000, but the background text shows that this refers to Student Aid.
The Social Democrats
The Social Democrats' budget proposal only contains data for 2025, unlike the government's budget which always contains forecasts for the next three years (i.e. 2025, 2026 and 2027). This is therefore not reflected in the table for appropriations 2:67 Special grants in the higher education sector (where the student unions' state subsidies are found) whether the Social Democrats intend to maintain the government's upcoming reduction in subsidies to student unions from 2026 or not. However, it is clear from the motion for Expenditure area 16 Education and university research that the Social Democrats want to “clearly mark our distance from reducing support for student influence in the coming years”.
In its budget, the government reduces the ceiling amounts for several higher education institutions, which the Social Democrats restore in their budget proposal with the aim of “ensuring that the number of educational places does not decrease”. The Social Democrats’ budget proposal thus means 100 million kronor more for the higher education institutions. However, the compensation amounts per student remain the same, which continues to mean an erosion.
Government incentives in the form of production support are proposed for student housing, among other things. In total, the Social Democrats are investing 8 billion kronor with the aim of getting housing construction started.
There is also an effort to ensure that students and young people can use public transport free of charge during the summer.
Vänsterpartiet
The Left Party proposes to increase student union funding by SEK 30 million in 2025. This would mean an increase in funding by just over 55 percent to a level equivalent to approximately SEK 270 per full-time student and doctoral student. The amount is still lower than what UKÄ proposed in the report. 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 on educational development and quality review.
In terms of education funding, the Left Party proposes a quality enhancement of 320 million kronor, which refers to increased compensation amounts per full-year student. They also propose targeted investments to expand medical 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 20 million kronor is being made to UHR to keep down the fees for the higher education entrance exam and promote the opportunity for people with disabilities to take the higher education entrance exam.
Overall, the Left Party is allocating SEK 320 million more than the government for student funding in 2025. This is partly to finance an expansion of the number of places, and partly because the Left Party opposes the government's reduction of the higher level of funding. They also propose introducing the possibility of writing off student debts for healthcare graduates who choose to live and work in sparsely populated regions, and is allocating SEK 39 million for this.
Furthermore, the Left Party proposes to increase the base allocation for research by 500 million kronor.
The Left Party also wants to allocate 20 million kronor 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.
Announcement 2:64 Special expenses within universities and colleges However, it will be increased by SEK 50 million in 2025 and SEK 100 million in the years thereafter to strengthen teacher education and, in particular, to ensure that more people with other professional backgrounds obtain teaching qualifications.
To strengthen CSN in the processing of the transition study support, the Center Party is increasing the appropriations by SEK 50 million per year from 2025 to 2027.
The Green Party
The Green Party highlights the problem of 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, the Green Party proposes a reinforcement for higher studies and research of 368 million SEK in 2025, which is distributed between funding within 2:3 to 2:67 and 3:1 to 3:8.
The Green Party is also making some targeted investments in specific education. They want to allocate 50 million kronor annually from 2025 to 2027 for further education of teachers. They also want to add 20 million kronor to compensate for VFU costs for medical education at Örebro University, which currently does not receive the same funding as medical education at other universities.
Regarding student funding, the Green Party wants to increase the grant portion by SEK 300 per month, which would cost a total of SEK 1,3 billion per year. In addition, SEK 50 million is allocated to CSN to speed up the processing time of the new transition study support.
The Green Party does not propose any change to the funding of student unions for 2025. However, the motion states that 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 students' democratic influence at universities in the long term.”
Students are mentioned 115 times in the motions of members of parliament
In addition to delving into the opposition parties' shadow budgets, we have also reviewed the motions that members of parliament have submitted.
Of total 3174 motions so 115 explicitly mentions us students (however, this simple phrase does not capture all motions that affect students).
There are differences between the parties. The Left Party is the party that highlights students in the largest proportion of its motions, followed by the Green Party. The Liberals and the Moderates are the parties that mention students the least in terms of the number of motions.
Left Party 14,9% (11 out of 74 motions)
The Green Party 7,5% (12 out of 160 motions)
Center Party 5,4% (17 out of 312 motions)
Sweden Democrats 3,7% (26 out of 701 motions)
Social Democrats 3,3% (26 out of 795 motions)
Christian Democrats 2,1% (6 out of 286 motions)
Liberals 1,9% (1 of 54 motions)
Moderates 1,7% (14 out of 800 motions)
Student unions are mentioned in a total of 13 motions, 10 of which mention the Swedish National Union of Students.