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The government’s and SV’s budget reduces international students’ access to Norwegian universities. This affects non-EEA students and some of the international students who are already in Norway.
Internationalization is both necessary and at the heart of our subjects. We believe that the tuition fee is unfortunate because it will weaken Norway on several levels, while at the same time this student group makes up only 3 percent of students at state study places.
Two areas are affected: competence building in Norway, and use of local labour. The government’s new “long-term plan for research and higher education” has a ten-year perspective. Therefore, we discuss what our knowledge society loses in a 10-year perspective as a result of this budget proposal.
In the long-term plan it is mentioned social challenges that have “become more acute” and that we are “dependent on research-based knowledge and expertise to understand and solve those challenges”. The first overarching goal is “strengthened competitiveness and innovativeness” because Norway needs specialist knowledge.
Knowledge-based education is a prerequisite for value creation in, among other things, the energy sector, the health sector, digitization and research. Today, the need for labor is greater than both available Norwegian specialist labor and the number of Norwegian students in these fields.
Through education of resident and incoming foreign students, employers get access to acclimatised and motivated specialists who are ready to do the job. Norway compensates for the shortage by recruiting specialist labor from abroad and by taking in students from abroad, and to some extent from the Norwegian labor market after completing education – with a multi-year head start in integration.
Contact with people from other cultures is also useful for developing multicultural competence, and enables insights we never get as tourists. First-hand exposure to other societal values contributes in both diplomacy and export business.
“Less contact surface at the universities makes it more difficult for Norway to act and communicate with the rest of the world.”
Smaller contact surface at the universities makes it more difficult for Norway to act and communicate with the rest of the world, and the consequences can be diplomatic and cultural misunderstandings. The way the world has developed in recent years, Norway should still show its solid commitment to reducing the world’s differences.
The tuition fee significantly reduces the number of international students – Sweden experienced this in 2013 after similar measures. Degrees in international politics, technology and health are losing students. Universities are losing jobs and study facilities. This leads to less specialist training.
Reduced educational offer and cultural distance increases recruitment costs. At the same time, various incentive schemes ensure an increase in student applications for “demanding” studies to enroll for the sake of the incentive. This can have a negative impact on innovation and quality. The consequences will be a shortage of specialists.
Business and the state must bear the increased costs of recruiting specialists from abroad. At the same time that tens of thousands of specialists are missing, the tasks must be solved with the help of international consulting companies. This is expensive and weakens the ability to innovate and expertise in our companies. Dependence on foreign consulting companies puts Norwegian self-government at risk. The result will be a less self-sufficient Norway with few specialists and which will have to exchange oil revenues for foreign innovation.
Second and third overall goals in the government’s long-term plan are “environmental, social and economic sustainability” and “high quality and accessibility in research and higher education”.
An undercommunicated the fact is that the non-EEA citizens who already live, work and have family in Norway are also affected by this budget proposal. Yes, those who already contribute to the Norwegian community.
Free higher education has been one of the pillars of Norwegian society and has been one of the most important areas for the inclusion of “local” migrants who moved to Norway with knowledge and experience from earlier life phases. Our experiences confirm that further education at master’s level has been an effective social investment for qualified migrants living in Norway – this beyond internships and other integration measures.
Free education for these groups are a better and more sustainable way of building economic capital in Norway.
The government proposes well some exceptions; for example refugees, those with a permanent residence permit, and those who are married to a Norwegian citizen. But assessment of the conditions for these is left to the educational institutions. What will be the direct consequences when the government simultaneously proposes major cuts to the education sector over time?
From autumn 2023 the universities’ and colleges’ already overloaded admissions offices are given a much greater burden, because with fewer financial resources, hundreds of additional documents from candidates who are citizens outside the EEA must be assessed, in addition to the 300-800 applications that usually come in each year.
With missing financing and extra workload, a strong counter-force is quickly built up where those from outside the EEA risk being seen as the least profitable.
Financially, it will be it is increasingly difficult to defend the recruitment and education of candidates who already live in Norway. International master’s programs are being weakened, and the chances of qualified migrants from outside the EEA being given the opportunity to integrate are constantly being reduced.
Many more will had to “start over” at the bottom of the Norwegian labor market and at a level often characterized as social dumping. The government risks increasing differences instead of uniting and strengthening society and the labor market with broad perspectives and skills.
Not only that this will pave the way for an even more divided and “poor” society, and this conflicts with the goals against alienation laid down in the long-term plan: to promote belonging and diversity.
Signed: Erika Gubrium, Professor of Globalization and Sustainability, Nuno Marques, Senior Lecturer in Innovation, Digital Transformation and Sustainability, Lothar Fritsch, Professor of Applied Information Security, OsloMet and Tom G. Griffiths, Professor Development Studies, OsloMet
