CONDITIONS FOR RESEARCH. The government has now presented its research bill establishing the framework for Swedish research policy until 2020. Sahlgrenska Academy’s CFO Kristina Johansson has read the bill, noting that it may require a lot of creativity for the funds to cover all the government’s ambitious plans, if the final allocation for our university is at the same level as for the previous research bill.
A research bill is often vague and general in its formulation, and it is difficult to see the direct consequences for an individual university and even less for a faculty. One thing is clear, though, and is very comforting: the strategic research areas are being made permanent, meaning GPCC will continue receiving earmarked funding.
GPCC will continue receiving earmarked funding
In addition to making the strategic research areas permanent, the government is launching several strategic initiatives aim at meeting societal challenges. One initiative is a ten-year research program in which the various research councils coordinate efforts. These areas are climate change, sustainable community planning, social housing policy, migration and integration, antibiotic resistance, applied welfare research, and work life research. Each area has a specific research council overseeing it and specific funds allocated to the councils. For example, the Swedish Research Council has been allocated SEK 25 million and Forte receives SEK 60 million for work life research. Specific research initiatives are also taken to strengthen biobanks and registry research, clinical research, and research on welfare quality, organization and processes. In addition to these, the government is investing to expand the strategic innovation areas that were introduced with the last research bill by specifically noting five collaboration programs, including Life Science. Vinnova will receive SEK 400 million through 2020 and Formas will receive SEK 100 million for this expansion.
The government intends to strengthen research appropriations to universities by SEK 1.3 billion from 2018 to 2020. No numbers have been specified, but bibliometrics and external funds supplemented with some form of collaboration will continue to be used as indicators. Assessments by Vinnova of the universities’ collaborations will determine how funds are allocated until a new allocation report for both education funding and research funding is completed. A new appropriations system will come into effect at the earliest in 2020. In the bill, the government agrees with the critique of the Swedish Research Council’s proposal for evaluating research (FOCUS) as too costly and labor intensive, and instead will appoint the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) to review both results and how research quality develops. How this will be less costly and labor-intensive is not specified.
An increase of SEK 1.3 billion should be compared with the previous two research bills, where SEK 1.5 billion was appropriated to universities for new research for the 2009–2012 period and SEK 900 million for the 2013–2016 period. It is clear that the smaller institutions of higher learning will receive more resources, which can already be seen in the 2016 budget bill, which specifies that new universities and colleges will receive 60 percent of the increase and the other (older) universities will receive 30 percent. Of the SEK 300 million being allocated, the University of Gothenburg is receiving SEK 6 million.
The higher appropriations will address several problems. The universities are to use this funding to improve equality among teachers, create more career development positions, increase mobility for younger researchers, increase external recruitment, strengthen infrastructure, provide more research time for current employees, and increase research connections for their academic programs. In addition, the new funds are to strengthen colleges and research at the new universities. If the University of Gothenburg’s allocation is on par with 2016, it will require a lot of creativity for the funds to cover all the government’s ambitious plans.
The bill places strong emphasis on gender equality. Goals for newly recruited professors are to be reinstated, and, by 2030, half of newly recruited professors are to be women. The mission of organizations providing research funds to consider gender equality when awarding funds is to be made more consistent between organizations. It is also proposed that the research councils be instructed to promote sex and gender perspectives in the research that they fund, where relevant. First, they will be tasked with determining what methods they should use for including a sex and gender perspective in research. The allocation of research funding by universities based on a gender perspective is also noted.
Temporary positions should preferably be reduced and the government is dissatisfied with the fact that career development positions have not increased significantly while other forms of employment are increasing sharply.
Except for the announcement about GPCC, it is not possible to deduce what Sahlgrenska Academy will receive. We will not know how much new money the university will receive until September 2017 (the 2018 Budget Bill), and we do not yet know how the university will choose to allocate funding. Clearly there are many goals to meet, and they point in many different directions.
The government’s research bill: http://www.regeringen.se/rattsdokument/proposition/2016/11/prop.-20161750/
Kristina Johansson
CFO, Sahlgrenska Academy’s Office
