Astrid Söderbergh Widding
Astrid Söderbergh Widding

A wide range of information needs to be included when establishing the budget documentation, such as the total budget, information on education and research, provision of premises and so on. But the budget documentation also provides a welcome opportunity to highlight issues that are important to the university. 

Just as we pointed out a few years ago, we wish to highlight the deterioration in the price tag of our science programmes – where we particularly emphasise language sciences this year – which we propose may be set off against the programme price tag Other. As usual, we also wish to highlight problems associated with the Akademiska Hus assignment, particularly issues with market rent, which has a particularly high impact on metropolitan universities and leads to unsustainable trends in rental prices. 

Based on the research policy bill, we wish to emphasise in particular the need to ensure both the long-term supply and efficient operation of e-infrastructures. Further, we argue that the conditions for associate senior lecturers need to be changed, so that they are searchable up to seven years after defence of their doctoral theses. Furthermore, we also call for an increase in special funds to support students with disabilities. Finally, we also highlight the need to allocate funds for the Bergian Garden – while this is an important commitment for Stockholm University, no special funds are currently allocated to the Garden. 

In addition to the main points outlined above, we also give a more detailed account of our core operations. The budget documentation will then be presented for discussion at the annual dialogue meeting between the Ministry of Education and Research and the university. The government has announced that it will expand its administrative supervision of higher education institutions. This will require a good dialogue with the ministry, but above all, the university will need to carefully assess its own priorities.  

This is a text written by President Astrid Söderbergh Widding under the subject line “Words from the University's Senior Management Team”, where different members of the university’s management team take turns writing about current issues. “Words from the University's Senior Management Team” is included in each issue of “News for Staff”, a newsletter that goes out to all university employees.