UiO adopts a business approach to higher education:
- May get in the way of teaching and the curriculum
The university is set to be run like a company listed on the stock exchange. Venstrealliansen and several people from the research environment are upset by the decision.
På norsk- The result is that we no longer will have the time to counsel and follow-up students. Professor Jan Helge Solbakk.
- The system they are suggesting is a depraved way of thinking when it comes to public institutions. It is not adequate and it doesn’t make allowances for the many goals a university should have, claims Sigrid Hvidsten, leader of the left-wing student party Venstrealliansen.
- To administer a university based on business management principles, will only promote quantity rather than quality, and focusing on producing student credits and research publications only does not promote quality, Hvidsten stresses.
The university board decided on Monday that the University of Oslo (UiO) should change their administrative methods in order to achieve more effective reporting procedures with regards to research and study results.
A number of people from the staff at UiO are critical to the decision, and fear that administering the university like a company listed on the stock exchange will lead to unfortunate consequences.
A financial burden
Professor Jan Helge Solbakk is one of those who believe that a larger administrative body will take up a substantial part of the means in the academic organisation.
- The result is that we no longer will have the time to counsel and follow-up students, he says.
Reform critic and former rector candidate Kristian Gundersen agrees with Solbakk.
- In the long run, we will end up with a gray and boring university, risking that the more creative people won’t bother to go here. Some people have already resigned.
Poor teaching?
Venstrealliansen is concerned that the decision will have an affect on the students’ everyday life.
- If marketing principles are to be followed in the future, we fear that the quality of the curriculum and the teaching will be a lot poorer, Hvidsten says.
Rector at UiO, Geir Ellingsrud, does not understand the criticism.
- How do you respond to the criticism that this will lead to poorer quality in research?
- I cannot see why, and can only state that I am satisfied with the decision.
Stands corrected
Solbakk is not pleased that the proposition on management by objectives and results was not submitted for a hearing at the research community at the university.
- This proposition will not only have technical-administrative consequences, which was the impression Harlem tried to make during the discussion last Thursday, but will also have a direct effect on the various courses, he says.
Solbakk adds that the fact that this was not done, is extra disappointing since the current rector was voted in based on a platform that was critical of reforms, and who has promised to do something about the democratic shortage at the university.
Ellingsrud answers that he can understand the problem and that the case has been discussed with the deans and the institute directors.
- However, I see now that a more formal hearing might have been in order.
