Universities

Historically, most of the Norwegian university system developed later than in other western European countries. Efforts have recently been made to upgrade regional colleges to research-performing status, helping them to act as motors of regional development. There have been significant reforms in the past few years, bringing the intellectual property regime into line with international practice, strengthening universities’ commercialisation capabilities and more stringent testing of the quality of both education and research. The ratio of block grant to competitive funding is high by international standards, but this may in part be mitigated by the introduction of a research performance-driven component into the block grant.

The University of Oslo (UiO) was founded in 1811 in what was then called Christiania, after a long campaign to persuade the government in Copenhagen (Denmark) that it was not adequate for the University of Copenhagen to serve as a national university. An agricultural college was set up at Ås outside Oslo in 1859. A national polytechnic (Norges Tekniske Høyskole, NTH) was set up in Trondheim only in 1910, and a business school only in 1936 (NHH – the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) in Bergen.

In 1996, NTH was merged with the much newer University of Trondheim to become NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). The university in Bergen was the second to be set up in the country in 1948 and the one in Tromsø was established in 1972 with a mission to provide both higher education and research to support development in the northern part of Norway. The regional college in Stavanger achieved university status in 2005, as did the national agricultural college, now called the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB). Agder University gained its new status from 1 January 2008. Accordingly, Norway currently has seven universities.

Table 2.5. Number of students by type of educational institution, 2006 Number of students

All institutions 211 559

All universities and specialised university institutions 87 562

All university colleges 123 997

Of which state university colleges 93 169

Source: Background report.

Table 2.6. The main universities and largest colleges in Norway

Universities Number of students

University of Oslo 29 693

Norwegian University of Science and Technology 19 873

University of Bergen 15 558

Agder University 7 429

University of Tromsø 5 876

Norwegian University of Life Sciences 2 855

Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration 2 576

Main university colleges

Norwegian School of Management 18 248

Oslo University College 11 516

Sør-Trøndelag University College 6 868

Bergen University College 6 201

Hedmark University College 6 001

Telemark University College 5 099

Nord-Trøndelag University College 4 894

Bodø University College 4 262

Østfold University College 4 142

Source:Background report.

Table 2.5 shows that about 41% of students are at a university; the rest are at university colleges (only the largest are listed in Table 2.6). National policy is for the university colleges to become motors of regional develop-ment and to upgrade their research capabilities. However, their funding remains primarily oriented towards teaching and the research funding pro-grammes RCN has dedicated to their needs are very small, compared with the number of teachers who need to upgrade their skills to perform research.

Experience from the KK Foundation’s funding of small-scale competence centres in Swedish regional universities and colleges³⁷ underlines how difficult it is to make the transition from teaching to a research-based university, even when “ring-fenced” transitional funding is available.

The Bernt Commission (2001) promoted the idea that universities and colleges should more actively commercialise their inventions, and this led to a Bayh-Dole shift in the law in 2002, which abolished the so-called teachers’

exception that gave university researchers rights over their inventions, assigned intellectual property rights (IPR) to the institutions, and gave the universities a more explicit commercialisation mission. As a result, the universities have set up (Birkeland Innovation at the University of Oslo) or expanded (UNIFOB at the University of Bergen) commercialisation activities, drawing on good foreign practice. At this stage, there is only limited evidence on which to base an assessment of the performance of these structures.

International experience suggests that it will take many years for such structures to become viable, so it is pointless to look for short-term returns.

However, a recent evaluation of the instruments and agents in place to pro-mote commercialisation of publicly funded research is rather encouraging but notes some room for incremental improvements.³⁸

Norwegian universities have been subject to reform pressures similar to those in many European countries and substantial changes have taken place in tertiary education the last ten years, mainly aimed at encouraging insti-tutions to be more responsive to the needs of society and the economy.

Following the recommendations of the Mjøs Committee, the Education Ministry launched a “quality reform” in 2003 that shortened and restructured degrees and established the NOKUT agency for quality assurance in higher education. As a result of the reform, all higher education institutions have significantly greater autonomy for managing and organising their activities.

The increased institutional autonomy and accountability has led to radical 37. The KK Foundation has invested more than SEK 6 billion since its creation in 1994 in establishing research environments with distinctive profiles at Sweden’s new universities and other higher education institutions, see http://www.kks.se.

38 . Einar Rasmussen, Roger Sørheim and Øystein Widding,

Gjennomgang av virkemidler for kommersialisering av forskningsresultater, see: www.hibo.no/neted/upload/attachment/site/group1/Kommersialisering.pdf.

changes in methods and tools for higher education institutions and the authorities. There has been a transition from ministry micromanagement to management by objectives so that the Ministry of Education and Research identifies goals and monitors the institutions’ goal achievement.

The university funding system has three components.

x The basic component is based on the institution’s historical budget level and varies among institutions. The basic component secures stability and predictability, and represents on average about 60% of the grant to the institution. Changes in the basic component are based not on results, but on political priorities.

x The education component is an average of about 25% of the grant to institutions which is distributed on basis of the number of study points (ECTS credits) obtained by students at the institutions and the number of incoming and outgoing exchange students. This component has no upper limit and was created to give an incentive to achieve these insti-tutions’ first main goal: universities and university colleges should offer education of high international quality. Rewarding the number of study points can create an incentive to increase student throughput. Institutions can for instance increase quality through closer follow-up of students and more contact between teachers and students. The teaching component covers around 40% of the costs of a study programme, and 60% of the costs are covered through the basic component.

x Around 15% of the grant to institutions is distributed through the research component. This component was created in accordance with the institu-tions’ second main objective: universities and university colleges should obtain results of high international quality in R&D. The research com-ponent has a strategic part and a performance-based part. The strategic part includes specific funds for PhD positions and scientific equipment, among others. The total performance-based part is a fixed amount and is redistributed among institutions each year. Four indicators determine the redistribution: number of PhD candidates, EU research grants, research grants from the Research Council of Norway and scientific publishing.

The Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions is responsible for creating and updating a list of national and international scientific journals of high quality to be used for the last of these indicators.

A further objective focuses on the institution’s ability to co-operate with external institutions, communicate research results, and meet the needs of society. The Education Ministry is currently considering an additional performance-based component in the funding system based on indicators measuring communication of R&D results and innovation. For now these indicators will not be used for the funding system, although communication,

innovation and entrepreneurship play a central role in discussions between the institutions and the ministry.