The erosion of higher education and teacher time

Sweden has the least teacher-led time in higher education in Europe, according to Eurostudent, an international survey that every two years compares the economic and social conditions of students in different European countries. As participants in the survey, students from different countries are asked to report how much time per week they spend in teacher-led classes and how much they spend on self-study. With an average of only 11 hours of teacher-led instruction per week, Sweden is at the bottom of the ranking among the countries participating in the survey. 

Uppsala Student Union is very alarmed by this result. the union has long been pushing the issue of the importance of having a sufficient amount of teacher-led time in education. This is to ensure that education is of high quality. Earlier this year we published the report A follow-up of teacher-led time from a student perspective: An investigation of the proportion of teacher-led teaching in education at six of the faculties at Uppsala University. In this report, it could be established that the greater majority of the faculties at Uppsala University that were investigated had less than five hours of teacher-led time per week. Some courses even had as little as two hours of teacher time per week. The knowledge to be taught to students requires pedagogical input from teachers with scientific competence; it is too complex to be acquired through self-study alone. Consequently, in order for students to adequately benefit from their education, a sufficient amount of tutor time needs to be provided.

The lack of teacher-led time can be traced to a systematic erosion of higher education in Sweden today. Within the current resource allocation system for higher education, there is a so-called productivity deduction that results in around 1-2% of the HEIs' funding being deducted each year. The purpose of the deduction is to create incentives for HEIs to make their operations more efficient - in other words, to carry out their official duties at as little cost to the state as possible. The bigger problem is that this principle for resource allocation is based on the assumption that the activities of higher education institutions can be equated with those that exist in the business sector, where the aim is to reduce production costs while optimizing the outcome. But it is not possible to streamline the learning of knowledge in the same way as you can streamline the production of a product. A student's educational needs are the same today as they were 30 years ago, regardless of how much institutions are forced to scale back their resources. Since this system was introduced in the mid-1990s, funding to higher education institutions has been so low that additional funding of around SEK 7 billion would be required to achieve the same purchasing power today. In addition to these declining resources per student, overproduction of students, increased time spent on administration and more students in need of special support often result in teaching time having to be cut to keep the institutions' activities alive. 

Sweden's ambition to be a world-leading knowledge nation remains. But the downward trend in the amount of teaching time available has a direct negative impact on the quality of students' education - and thus on the future supply of skills. In the report Resources for teaching at Swedish universities and colleges, Stephen Hwang, Professor Emeritus of Physics and former Rector of Halmstad University, explains the reprehensible situation as follows: "The erosion of resources has led to the goal of providing students with teaching that is on par with the ambition of having a world-class higher education becomes more and more distant." He goes on to write that "[t]he productivity gap and lack of adequate resources is one reason why higher education is on a slippery slope, with fewer resources and thus less opportunity to provide high-quality teaching as befits a leading knowledge nation." 

It is the opinion of the Uppsala Student Union that this erosion of higher education needs to stop so that higher education institutions have better conditions to be able to provide high quality teaching. With a sufficient amount of teacher-led time, we can ensure that students can adequately benefit from their education. This is a necessity if Sweden's position as a knowledge nation is to remain strong and the supply of skills for socially important work roles is not to be jeopardized. Uppsala Student Union therefore wants...

... long-term investments should be made to ensure sustainable financing of education over time.

... that the resource allocation system at undergraduate and postgraduate level is reviewed to meet the increased costs for higher education institutions.

... that higher education institutions should be exempted from the productivity deduction when calculating their allocation from the state budget.

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List of sources:

Eurostudent, 2021. Social and Economic Conditions of Student Life in Europe. https://www.eurostudent.eu/download_files/documents/EUROSTUDENT_VII_Synopsis_of_Indicators.pdf. (Retrieved 2023-10-19).

Stephen Hwang, 2023. Resources for teaching at Swedish universities and colleges. https://hh.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1799119&dswid=3329. (Retrieved 2023-10-23).

SULF, 2018. Systemic failure in the knowledge factory - on the erosion of reimbursement amounts for higher education. https://sulf.se/rapport/rapport-systemfel-i-kunskapsfabriken/. (Retrieved 2023-10-27).

Uppsala Student UnionA follow-up of teacher-led time from a student perspective: A study of the proportion of teacher-led teaching in education at six of the faculties at Uppsala University. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kByyYECvLKZMNWKuNXqh4tsXpTycmI_S. (Retrieved 2023-10-19).