Swedish Government Increases Research Budget, but it's Not Enough

In it's budget proposal for 2008, the Swedish Research Minister, Lars Leijonborg, has promised an extra 300 million Swedish Crowns (SEK) to go to research and will divided up according to the Swedish Science Council's (VR) prioritizations.

For researchers is the increase in money that they can apply for valuable, but it's far too little and the proposal that VR should divide up the money puts even more pressure on researchers to compete with each other which can have negative effects. One of the negative effects of competition is that to much time is spent on grant writing, time that should be spent on more important things, such as research, or simply give researchers more time to reflect over their research. The increase in funds is so small that it's almost funny and in my opinion, it's still not enough.

The government's aim of increasing the quality of research that it's country produces is in itself not a bad thing. The alternative being that one has an aim of just producing results for the sake of producing results, i.e., a quantity arguement, but in my opinion, this is the wrong way of going about it.

In my opinion, money should be given directly to the faculties where research is being conducted, who should then be left to decide how to use the money to do the thing that they are best at, research. A universities internal quality control methods should allow for high quality research without the hassle and time-wasting that is goes into grant writing today. Once every 4 or 5 years the government could conduct an external quality review to see if the system is working as it should.

In short my arguement for this method would be "More time for research and less for grant-writing"

Read the goverment's budget factsheet for it's Higher Education Budget 2008
http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/08/82/73/a52a57fb.pdf

Swedish Government Wrong to Reduce number of Places in Higher Education

Recently the Swedish government has decided to give more money to higher education. Hooray I hear you cry? However, I agree more with the view voiced by "The Swedish Confederation for Professional Employees" who added to the debate by saying that the reduction of places at Higher Education will more than likely disuage students from non-academic backgrounds to apply to Higher Education therefore increasing the gaps that already exist in society. (see http://www.tco.se/templates/Data____6100.aspx in Swedish). Agreed that one should not only look to produce graduates en masse just for the sake of it, but it's can hardly be a goal of Swedish society to increase inequality and decrease the opportunity for the underpriveliged to go on to Higher Education and broaden their minds. I give a big thumbs down to the Swedish Government. Anyone agree?