The budget bill, the universities and Stockholm University

President’s blog 24 September, 2023.

Last week, the autumn budget bill was presented (20 September), which has certainly not escaped anyone. The following day, the Minister for Education, Mats Persson, presented the bill from the Ministry of Education’s perspective in front of Presidents for universities and other heads of authorities under the Ministry.

He particularly emphasized that the general saving in the state of 1% over three years, in order to achieve efficiency, has been reduced to 0.5% in terms of education and research at the universities. Important, of course, not least for the signal value – but at the same time we already have the productivity deduction which erodes our grants from year to year, and it is hardly in efficiency that we may lack. It would have been easier to digest a more straightforward motivation, that despite this, savings are required to invest in other, specific sectors of society.

The most important point was otherwise to present the so-called “ingenjörspaketet”, an investment at Uppsala University, Lund University and Chalmers University of Technology with new education slots. It goes hand in hand with a strategic research investment for the same universities, aimed at electrification and battery technology, and an investment in excellence in education regarding batteries, technology and the green transition.

However, KTH will not be out of luck either, as responsible for the upcoming national “Cybercampus Sweden”.

Furthermore, a higher price hike was announced for science and technology, which also includes the subject knowledge part of the teacher training courses. It is both requested and welcomed, but now it only means an increase of 1.6% before 2024 – fully realised, however, 4.8% in 2026. As a whole, despite this reinforcement, Stockholm University will receive somewhat less resources for education at basic and advanced level next year.

Investments are also made in retraining and lifelong learning, and CSN receives temporary funds to be able to manage the new student finance scheme – at the same time as a task is announced regarding a change in the courses and programmes offered – and an investment in a short supplementary teaching practice, which also benefits Stockholm University. A number of additional initiatives are aimed specifically at individual universities or other authorities.

During the coming “school year” – the minister made a special point of this university-adapted formulation – as is well known, a research policy bill is waiting to be included in next year’s budget bill, a national STEM strategy (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) is promised covering preschool to higher education, at the same time that the work for a reduced administrative burden on the part of the government must continue. The bill emphasizes, however, that the universities themselves bear a great deal of responsibility here for having increased the administrative burdens. On the contrary, I would like to claim that we at Stockholm University strive to minimize them.

Finally, a redistribution of the funding cap between the higher education institutions is announced, with SEK 100 million in 2025, SEK 200 million in 2026 and SEK 250 million from 2027. The purpose of this is to strengthen the motivation for a high-quality educational offer as well as to prioritize and strengthen areas with skill shortages, especially STEM. This is extremely worrying from Stockholm University’s perspective, where over 85% of the courses are within the Human Science Academic Area. A major problem today lies in the lack of applications for STEM educations, and this will hardly be remedied so quickly through the planned STEM strategy. It also testifies to a significant and worrying single-mindedness, that all other important areas of education now suddenly seem to have faded into the background – when, at the same time, ahead of the EU’s next framework program, on the contrary, there is talk of the desperate need for SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) to be able to address, interdisciplinary, the major societal challenges.

In addition to this, there is another change that the Government did not mention, but which has a great impact on us as institutions of higher education: the cut of no less than a third of the funding for student influence to the student unions that has been announced from 2026 onwards. Student influence is an important part of our mission as a university. Now, in practice, the government leaves it up to the universities to finance the cut funding – at the same time that most of us are already significantly strengthening the unions’ work towards the students.

Astrid Söderbergh Widding
President