This morning, the government presented its budget proposal for 2018. The only real investments in higher education are related to more education places. The proposal otherwise contains no major surprises that affect higher education. Underfunded education will remain underfunded. The government shows that they see higher education teaching as a non-issue, even though pedagogy is a central piece of the puzzle in high-quality education. Only focusing on volume and not content gives the impression that the government primarily sees higher education as a labor market policy measure. However, there are some parts of the autumn budget that particularly affect the conditions for quality in higher education.
The government is extending the emergency reinforcement for the humanities, social sciences, theology and law. This averts the threat of a drastic reduction in funding for around 40% of all university students. The current “quality reinforcement” for the most acutely underfunded programmes was introduced in 2016 and was due to run until 2018. The government has now announced that the increase will be more long-term. This is of course good, but calling it an “investment” is misleading.
Higher education pedagogy is not mentioned. SFS has long stressed the importance of increasing pedagogical competence in higher education as part of raising quality. When the government released its research bill a year ago, it received criticism from several quarters for not giving pedagogy any space. The critics seem to have fallen on deaf ears. In the bill's hundred pages about universities and colleges, pedagogy is not mentioned once.
Despite harsh criticism: research funding is starting to be distributed based on collaboration. Less than a year ago, Vinnova presented a model for measuring and distributing resources based on collaboration between higher education institutions and the rest of society. Many consultation bodies were strongly critical of the model and argued that the report's conclusions were poorly substantiated. Even the very ambition to distribute resources based on a collaboration measure was heavily criticized. Despite this, the government unfortunately chose to proceed with the proposal. The timing is particularly bad since a more extensive investigation into resource allocation for higher education is underway at the same time.
Despite the authority's recommendations: Student influence is not being strengthened. This spring, the University Chancellor's Office announced that the state grant for student influence had to be tripled or quadrupled to give student unions reasonable conditions to carry out their statutory mission. At the same time, there is a consensus in the sector that student influence is an important quality aspect that contributes to improving education. The responsible minister has also pointed this out several times. However, the government is choosing to wait.
Not everything is negative. The student allowance is being increased by 450 kronor per month. A strengthening of the students' health insurance is in the works. But the budget bill the government presented today leaves a lot to be desired. There has been a lot of room for reform, but the government still seems to believe that students should be content with little.