Tradition and renewal
As Norway’s oldest university, UiO was established 200 years ago, and became an important part of our nation-building. For 200 years, UiO has been changing Norway. UiO must build on its strong and autonomous position as Norway’s leading university and its consummate ability to renew itself, thereby remaining a force for development. The university establishes the basis for renewal of society through new insight and knowledge. Central to the university’s activities are insightful and creative people on a quest for knowledge. UiO’s strategic goal for 2020 is to strengthen its international position as a leading research university, through close interaction between research, education, communication and innovation. The university must remain an academic powerhouse that provides new knowledge and develops the ability of society and individuals to ask good questions and find viable answers.
UiO must remain a socially relevant and innovative institution. The Status Report for Higher Education in 2016 ascertains that UiO has the largest number of business ideas and patent applications of all Norwegian universities, while the Research Barometer shows that UiO has the most co-authorships with industry, measured in the number of articles. First and foremost, UiO should be a classical broad-based university, covering all fields of science and humanities, founded on the ideal of curiosity-driven basic research and research-based education.
What distinguishes a research university from other institutions of higher education is that teaching and learning take place in communities that help advance the frontier of research in their fields, and that this takes place in multiple disciplines at the same time. High-level research in a broad range of disciplines constitutes a major resource for society. Norway derives growth from research results that provide new opportunities for society and industry, and that strengthen the basis for decisions regarding how these opportunities can and should be put to best use.
We will continue to pursue UiO’s strategy in close dialogue with the university’s students and employees, and help make the best provisions possible for each of our colleagues to develop their full potential, in collaboration with other outstanding people within their discipline, in Norway and abroad. We will identify and highlight the good examples found at UiO and share positive experiences with the organization as a whole. Good working conditions, good support functions and a good working environment are necessary to inspire and motivate employees and students. A proper balance between tradition and renewal will provide the people at UiO with the best opportunities to develop and search for knowledge and insight in a stimulating academic environment.
The people
Having resourceful, enthusiastic and creative students and employees is a precondition for UiO to succeed in its ambitions. We see the crucial importance of everybody at UiO having good working conditions. In common with the sector as a whole, UiO will face a major renewal of its academic staff in the years to come. This presents great opportunities, but it also means stiff competition for new employees.
We will recruit widely and internationally, while remaining aware of our responsibility as a leading Norwegian knowledge institution.
We will provide the employees of UiO with opportunities to develop through continuing education and career development. We will protect and improve the opportunities for academic staff members to undertake continuous research and to develop into accomplished lecturers. We will seek to achieve an inclusive and universal design of UiO’s activities to ensure optimal conditions for all employees and students.
The students
UiO shall provide excellent education at a high international level. The study programmes at UiO shall provide an academic basis for critical, independent and innovative thinking and further research. Moreover, the programmes shall provide the professionals of the future with solid and relevant qualifications for work in a wide range of areas in society, including the private sector. The programmes shall foster abilities and values that enable students to assume social and global responsibility, as well as promote democracy in an increasingly globalized and pluralist society. The programmes shall bring scientific knowledge to society by having new generations participate in the development and application of new knowledge.
UiO shall maintain high ambitions on behalf of its students and wishes to be Norway’s most attractive educational institution. UiO shall recruit from among the best students in Norway and abroad. UiO shall provide a varied and stimulating learning environment that surpasses the students’ expectations, and students and teachers shall have the benefit of conditions that permit them to fulfil their own ambitions as well as those of UiO.
We will develop and expand the measures for reaching out to new students, to ensure that they are integrated into academic and social communities and to ease their adaptation to student life. We will promote student involvement in evaluation and development of the study programmes. Furthermore, we will promote new, student-active forms of learning and teaching. In addition, we will promote increased use of digital media and learning technology, and strengthen the students’ opportunities to participate in research projects.
We will establish new arenas across faculty boundaries for multidisciplinary team and project work and interprofessional learning, and permit more freedom of choice in the programmes through better opportunities for combining courses across programmes, faculties and educational institutions in Norway and abroad.
We will continue to foster pedagogical competence and systematic evaluation, and strengthen educational leadership to promote excellence in education. We will ensure relevance in the educational programmes through stronger collaboration and arenas for contact between the employment market, industry and public administration. Moreover, we will seek to establish schemes that ensure all students immediate feedback with grounds for grading decisions. Furthermore, we will encourage a broad debate on the composition and profile of UiO’s portfolio of study programmes.
Young researchers
The doctoral programme builds on the academic foundation provided by the basic academic study programme and professional training programmes. Its goal is to train top experts in each discipline for further research and demanding roles in society. A survey undertaken by the Academy of Young Researchers shows that there is little correspondence between the expectations held by young researchers and their real possibilities for embarking on a career in a permanent research position. Today, the university has no framework that ensures predictability for young people who want to go into research and that facilitates their transition between institutions and sectors. The university must take responsibility for structuring the doctoral programme in such a way as to establish correspondence between the PhD candidates’ expectations and qualifications on the one hand and their future career opportunities on the other. Even young researchers in postdoctoral positions need appropriate career planning, including nurturing of skills that are applicable both within and outside of academia.
We will establish a development programme for researchers in recruitment positions to ensure that the candidates acquire competence and experience in areas such as project management, communication and teaching. This will help strengthen their research competence and ease their transition between sectors. We will provide students and researchers at the PhD level with better competence in management, innovation, entrepreneurship and interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary team and project work.
We will promote schemes for counselling of students on possible career paths both within and outside of academia. Such schemes must be adapted to the traditions and arrangements of each discipline in terms of research training. We will therefore ensure that a wide range of measures are assessed, including introduction of elective elements with preparation for working life in the doctoral programme, the use of research schools and special mentoring or tutoring schemes with participation by people from social and business life outside of academia.
We will seek to ensure that temporary employment is restricted to situations in which the need for temporary staff is unpredictable, and that external funding alone does not serve as grounds for temporary employment. We will also seek to ensure that employees in research positions and lectureships are provided with conditions enabling them to qualify for a professorship after a competition or adjudication. This requires that employees in research positions have the time to teach, that employees in lectureships have the time to do research, and that excellence in teaching provides merits for promotion.
Environment and infrastructure
Creativity and hard work depend on a safe working environment for everybody that acknowledges all individual contributions. A good university depends on its physical and collegial environment. Today, the university manages a great number of buildings, a task that presents certain challenges. Large projects are being realized, such as the Life Science facility, new buildings for the Faculties of Dentistry and Law, and renovation of the museums. Many of these will give rise to discussions about forms of organization as well as distribution of resources at UiO. Our backgrounds make us very well qualified to ensure appropriate processes and take good care of the development of these projects.
We will seek to ensure that UiO remains a place characterized by respect for diversity, and that the management remains inclusive, transparent and open to criticism. We will look seriously into the signals indicating that employees are afraid to express critical opinions about leaders and academic superiors. We will not tolerate bullying. We will not tolerate any reprisals against whistleblowers. We will make sure that all leaders collaborate closely with safety delegates, the Ombud for Students and UiO’s new Academic Ombudsman.
We will initiate strategic discussions on adapting the volume of resources for which UiO is responsible to what UiO should be responsible for in the future. The question of what UiO should manage in terms of buildings and equipment must be answered on the basis of an open process to decide on what the university’s core remits and academic priorities should be. Resource-intensive activities should not be undertaken at the cost of activities that require fewer resources, simply by virtue of their need for resources. Whenever UiO undertakes work of national significance, we will mobilize others to join us in this effort.
The opportunities
UiO’s opportunities reside in our strong traditions and our ability to foster creativity and renewal as a research-intensive, broad-based university. Tradition has for centuries lent vitality to the universities, and continues to make them some of the most important institutions for our future. Most of the world’s leading universities uphold this tradition, and the world relies on the universities to address the considerable challenges of our age.
The particular quality that a broad-based university represents, stems from the continuous dialogue and opposition between disciplines that are highly dissimilar, so that quality criteria are developed by way of knowledge drawn from multiple academic disciplines simultaneously. This produces better courses and subject development within each discipline and thus a better university. Breadth and heterogeneity counteract concentration and centralization and promote creativity and innovation. By spanning disciplines across the boundaries between the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, UiO gains its special strength.
We will provide the different disciplines with opportunities to develop on their own terms and encourage them to work together in academic communities to respond to the major questions of our age, that transcend individual disciplines. This requires rewarding of communities that develop cutting-edge expertise, as well as dismantling of organizational and cultural barriers against research and teaching in collaboration between disciplines. More contact and collaboration across boundaries will better permit us to learn from each other’s successes.
Management
Creating the best preconditions for developing the university requires clear leadership. Academic leadership must be exercised on the basis of thorough familiarity with, and enthusiasm for, research and education, founded on the core values of academia: critical quest for truth, academic freedom and social relevance. The management must enjoy the legitimacy and trust that follow from its origin in, and accountability to, the university community.
Experience from or competence in management can also be a factor in appointments at the university. Our own researchers, who will lead their own projects or collaborative efforts, will also benefit from such training. We need to widen the employees’ opportunities to acquire such competence. The younger generation is interested and motivated for this, and it is these whom we will address above all. In this way, we can develop competence and interest in elected and management positions in other areas also, and at levels other than those within their own field of research: in departments, faculties and the university. In other words: build academic democracy.
We will reclaim the initiative for internal academic management. We will do so by initiating and promoting open discussions on the development of UiO, with the academic heads of the faculties and other units, as well as the students, and by establishing informal, ad‑hoc discussion forums. We will work closely with the student organizations and the employees’ trade unions.
We will seek to ensure that the universities can set the agenda for national research policy to a greater extent than today. We will continue to develop the university at the interface between the expectations defined by society and the academic freedom to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself. We will seek to comply with the requirements for relevant and useful education and research by increasing society’s awareness that without academic freedom, this is impossible. Academic freedom has an institutional as well as an individual aspect. The institutional aspect means that the university must develop its own organizational structures, and we will seek to ensure that the academic communities and the elected academic ombudsmen at all levels maintain the initiative and leadership with regard to development of the institution and its frameworks.
Remits, innovation and communication
We will renew UiO with respect for the institution’s traditions and special character. Its core activities are education and research. Communication and innovation, which many often refer to in the same breath, are additions to, and derived from, education and research. Without excellent education and research there is little to communicate, and the basis for innovation will be weak. The academic employees must therefore be primarily recruited on the basis of their ability and interest in teaching and research, and the resources must be allocated primarily to development of education and research. We believe that skilled researchers are innovative when the right conditions are provided to them, and that skilled educators are good communicators if they are provided with platforms from which to communicate. Ensuring such facilitation and creating such platforms are management tasks.
We believe that interdisciplinarity is often confused with multidisciplinarity, where skilled researchers collaborate to search for new knowledge within multiple disciplines. As a broad-based university, UiO possesses the best preconditions for such multidisciplinary approaches, and we will seek to provide further encouragement in this area. We will give emphasis to teaching students and employees how to collaborate with representatives of other disciplines and to see the value of this. Moreover, we will seek to ensure that such collaboration is seen as attractive and not hampered by organizational barriers.
Management of UiO involves many tasks and challenges other than those we have listed here. For example, UiO needs to have a sensible and fruitful relationship with authorities, partner institutions, industry and society as a whole, at home and abroad. The specific prioritization and design of initiatives must be undertaken in light of requirements and needs that may change over time. The values and attitudes to management described in our programme remain firm and will form the basis for the ways in which we will meet all challenges and demands.
Jan C. Frich, Hans Petter Graver, Inger Sandlie