Education: The Government’s Extra Investments – Uppsala University Gets This Many New Spots

Within the framework of the government’s extra reinforcement of universities and colleges, Uppsala University receives in total around SEK 62 million in 2020, 55 million in 2021 and over 37 million in 2022. These sums correspond to at least 1500 new spots during 2020 and at least 700 new spots during 2021.

The investment consists of two parts: partly a long-term expansion, but also several short-term efforts even before the autumn 2020.

“The university welcomes the investment on new educations, in particular permanent spots. By offering education spots to more people, the university may be involved and take social responsibility, support the labour market and make it possible for more people to get an education, or sharpen the education one already has,” says Daniel Gillberg, Planning director at Uppsala University.

Uppsala University will expand the admissions this summer and accept more students to educations for professions where there is now a shortage of staff, among others nurses and teachers. It is hard right now to tell exactly how many spots there will be on each programme because it is also about how many students that hospitals and schools can receive for work-based education (VFU).

The new money will also be used for long-term reinforcement – a gradual expansion which in the end will include more than 450 new education spots on educations for shortage occupations such as psychologist, dietician, social worker, land-surveyor and an expansion of the IT and engineer educations.

Further, the university will start a new education for occupational therapist with 150 full-time equivalent students from 2022.

The long-term investment also means an investment in the Science and Technology Foundation Year Programme with further 90 full-time equivalent students 2020 and 175 full-time equivalent students 2021. The students who have studied the Foundation Year Programme then have a guaranteed admission for science and technology educations which in its turn means a long-term expansion of these educations.

Among the more temporary investments, specially designed for people who have been laid off or want to develop skills, is right now going on an investment of summer courses, among others within IT and AI for professionals (within the framework of the national programme AI-competence for Sweden). A large part of these courses are given at a distance. The university will also be able to offer more spots on free standing courses this autumn.

In addition to this, special courses are also given for laid off engineers and a short course for people who have previously worked with healthcare and who want to return to that but need to refresh their knowledge.

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The government’s press information on investments in higher education because of the Corona pandemic (in Swedish)

Linda Koffmar