Sweden’s investments in academic excellence risk falling short unless the system for research funding and quality evaluation is reformed.
Despite broad consensus on the importance of academic excellence, and despite ambitious initiatives in the Government’s Research and Innovation Bill—not least the new excellence clusters—there is a risk that these efforts will not achieve their intended impact. The fundamental funding model remains largely unchanged, and without a more substantial reform, the systemic barriers preventing Swedish research from reaching a world-leading position are likely to persist.
This could be called the excellence trap: the effect that arises when the majority of research is funded through a project-based model in which many projects require co-funding. Such requirements mean that the more successful a university is in securing competitive funding, the less room it has to invest in the long-term development of excellence.
It may seem surprising that the system functions this way in Sweden. In recent years, more and more voices in the national debate have argued for the value of academic excellence at Swedish universities. Many recognise that Sweden ought to perform even better than it does, given the substantial resources invested in research.
The urgency of the issue is heightened by global developments: technological progress is accelerating at an unprecedented pace; the geopolitical situation makes it risky for expertise in strategically important technological fields to be concentrated in the United States and a handful of Asian countries; and major global challenges remain unresolved.
Socioeconomically self-evident
All of this makes the question of excellence more important than ever. Technical universities can play a decisive role. Historical and contemporary experience is also clear: proximity to truly outstanding universities attracts private investment in research and development. Taken together, investments in excellence should be viewed as self-evident from a socioeconomic perspective.
Yet the apparent clarity of the rationale does not make implementation straightforward.
Consider the Government’s recent Research and Innovation Bill, which commendably sought to provide additional resources and introduced several new initiatives, including the so-called excellence clusters. These are major programmes in which funding is administered by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and Vinnova: first, through a focus on scientific excellence under the Swedish Research Council, and then, in a second phase, through a focus on innovation under Vinnova. Universities are invited to submit applications.
The funding agencies are naturally doing everything they can to make these initiatives successful, but they operate within the same project-based logic on which the entire Swedish system is built. The result is more of the same, at a time when what may actually be needed is something genuinely different.
Achieving real change requires more than simply injecting additional money into the existing system. I believe the solution is conceptually simple but practically difficult. Two reforms must proceed hand in hand.
The first is to strengthen universities’ own capacity to continuously evaluate quality and to prioritise and concentrate resources on a limited number of research leaders and research environments, thereby creating critical mass in strategically important areas.
At the same time, the long-term funding that universities can allocate at their own discretion must be increased, with allocations based on precisely this demonstrated capacity.
The challenge is that these two reforms must be synchronised. If one is missing, the other will fail. Long-term funding without higher quality expectations typically leads to faculty expansion and the dilution of resources. Higher quality expectations without corresponding resources create conditions that leave universities even less competitive in the international race for talent.
Obstacles to overcome
There are many incentives pulling in the wrong direction. Policymakers are understandably cautious about giving universities greater autonomy over research priorities than they already possess. It is easy, therefore, to conclude that external funders should retain control of resources. This reflects a legitimate concern: ensuring that taxpayers’ money is used to maximise societal benefit.
In the long term, however, society is not best served by allocating resources in ways that are too narrowly targeted and too short-term. Academic freedom is not only a fundamental principle underpinning democratic values; it is also the most effective means of maximising the value that academia delivers to society. This may not be obvious to those without direct insight into how successful academic environments function, but nor is it a secret. A substantial body of experience, reports and studies supports this conclusion.
In addition, it is not easy for university leadership to pursue a strongly quality-driven and decisive strategy—to allocate resources according to where they are judged to deliver the greatest strategic benefit. Some individuals will inevitably feel disadvantaged. And without sufficient long-term resources to redistribute, meaningful reallocation becomes practically impossible: considerable dissatisfaction for very little tangible gain.
However difficult it may seem, I am convinced that such reform is necessary. As a nation, we simply cannot afford not to act.
Anyone who reads the Swedish Research Council’s regularly published Research Barometer (Forskningsbarometern) will see clear evidence of the problem: Sweden is among the OECD countries that invest most heavily in research, yet several comparable countries that invest similar amounts produce a higher proportion of highly cited research.
A central part of the solution must therefore be the creation of a system for evaluating universities’ academic excellence. It is not enough to treat the ability to attract external funding as the sole indicator of quality, because that is precisely when the excellence trap emerges. We need systems similar to those in the United Kingdom, Germany and Finland, where various models of quality-driven allocation of university funding have existed for many years. In these countries, public bodies are tasked with assessing universities’ ability to develop academic excellence.
The exact design of such a system in Sweden is open for discussion, but the need for it is beyond dispute. Otherwise, there is a significant risk that we will continue to fall into the excellence trap again and again.
Martin Nilsson Jacobi, President and CEO of Chalmers University of Technology
Under the headline "President’s perspective" the President and CEO for Chalmers University of Technology, shares his reflections on current topics that concern education, research and utilisation.