2005:2 R

Five years with three new universities

In terms of expenditure, there has been a development of fifty per cent in the activities of Växjö University, and of between 35-40 per cent at Karlstad and Örebro. These are major increases in volume compared to the major universities, but less than for some of the smaller higher education institutions.
Granting university status mainly means conferring entitlement to offer postgraduate programmes and it is of course in this area that the greatest changes have taken place. During the autumn semester of 2003, Örebro University had 300 students enrolled in its postgraduate programmes, and Karlstad and Växjö Universities each over 200. This means that Örebro has two postgraduate students enrolled per SEK million in research funding and Karlstad and Växjö each 1.5 per SEK million, which is on a par with the figures for the old, established universities.

One of the most important factors for a new university is of course the qualifications of its teachers, on which the quality of its offerings must be based - in undergraduate programmes as well as in research and postgraduate programmes. In this respect, before they gained university status there were large differences between Karlstad, Växjö and Örebro, on the one hand, and the established universities with their extensive research programmes, on the other. A great many of these differences survive, but the proportion of academically qualified teachers has risen at the new universities during the five years, to just over 40 per cent at Örebro University and to 35 per cent at Växjö University, while the proportion of teachers with research qualifications is still just over 30 per cent at Karlstad. These figures can be compared with those of the major universities, where about 60 per cent of the teachers have research qualifications. More qualified staff means greater ability to compete with long-standing research groups for research funding. During 2003 the revenues of the new universities for research and postgraduate programmes amounted to between SEK 200-250 million, of which about 60 per cent came in the form of direct state grants and the remainder as ‘external´ funding.

What is particularly interesting in connection with the quality of research is determining what proportion of external funding for research and postgraduate programmes is allocated on the basis of peer review. At Karlstad University 44 per cent of the external resources awarded for research and postgraduate programmes have been subject to peer review. At Växjö this figure was 16 per cent, and at Örebro 57 per cent. In absolute figures the total funding from the research councils, Vinnova and public and other research foundations amounted to SEK 46 million for Karlstad University, SEK 57 million for Örebro University and SEK 11 million from Vinnova and the public research foundations for Växjö University.

Generally speaking, it is reasonable to assert that developments during the first five-year period have been close to what could be expected - and this applies to all three universities. But there are variations that permit positive deviations from this overall impression to be identified for all three of them. Växjö University, where the volume of undergraduate programmes is smallest of the three, awards most master´s degrees. Karlstad University has been extremely successful in attracting external funding for research.