Higher education in Sweden is free of charge for Swedish citizens and people with permanent residence permits in Sweden and other EU, EEA or Switzerland countries. The education is financed through grants from the state.
The university is allocated funding in two separate pots: one for research and one for education. The education funding is in turn based on two components: the number of registered full-time students (FTS), and the number of students who complete their courses and earn higher education credits. The exact amount of funding for each student also varies between different subject areas.
SFS has long been critical of the fact that higher education institutions are dependent on students completing their courses and taking all their credits in order for the higher education institutions to receive full compensation. This leads to education programs that need to improve quality instead receiving fewer resources. It also creates an incentive to let more students through.
In 2016, SFS member bodies decided that the organization's focus issue for the following three years would be the university's resource allocation system. The work began in the fall of 2016 and ran through the spring of 2019.
The Steering and Resource Investigation (Strut)
In 2017, an investigation was appointed into the university's resource allocation and governance system. The investigation was named the Governance and Resources Investigation, abbreviated as Strut. The investigation's mission was to investigate the system for financing and governance, but the directive did not allow the investigation to make proposals that would increase the total costs to the state. The investigation submitted its final report in the spring of 2019.
Strut proposed a new trust-based governance system. The funds for education and research would also be merged into a single fund for both branches of activity.
The education grants would not be directly linked to the number of students from year to year, but would be based on operations over a multi-year period. In addition, the performance-based compensation amounts would be removed. The inquiry also proposed changes to the governance system that are not directly linked to resources.
The current situation
The government has moved forward with parts of Strut's proposal. Among other things, the government has presented bills on academic freedom and lifelong learning. The budget bill for 2021 created 3,000 places for lifelong learning, where the performance-based part of the appropriations was replaced by a corresponding basic salary instead.
At the end of 2020, the government will present the next research bill, in which it will outline its plans for research policy over the next four years. It was in the previous research bill from 2016 that the government announced its plans to establish the Steering and Investigation Committee. The 2020 research bill will be a kind of summary of what actually happened from Strut.