Swedish spending on R&D stagnating since 2002

The Swedish Research Council: uncovering stagnation

During the ten-year period, universities increased the number of undergraduates, admitted more doctoral students, hired more people, and faced higher salary costs. The result of this spending in the face of falling income was that there was insufficient or non-existent investment in infrastructure.

Higher education institutions are second only to Swedish companies in funding R&D, and in terms of pure research they are the prime players. In 2005 Swedish universities invested SEK 19 billion in research, compared with SEK 12 billion in corporate R&D.

The most noticeable change in the funding picture over the past few years was an increase in financing from abroad. Inward investment in research rose from SEK 2.6 billion in 1999 to SEK 8 billion in 2005. Most of this went to companies, while of the third that went to the higher education sector, the majority was from European Union programmes.

The most notable change in the ten-year period under review is that the proportion of direct government money declined, despite an overall increase of SEK 1 billion in the decade.

“Reduced funding has primarily affected the agricultural sciences, but in 2005 the curves showed for the first time in ten years a negative trend in funding for the humanities and natural sciences and engineering,” says Per Hyenstrand, analyst at the Swedish Research Council and one of the authors of the report.

In the social sciences and medicine, on the other hand, funding has increased in the last few years.

Funding for research and postgraduate education at universities increased by 34 per cent over the ten-year period. Resources for undergraduate education rose by 33 per cent; The number of students registered grew by 38 per cent; The number of doctoral students went up by 16 per cent; The number of doctoral students completing their doctorates per year rose by nearly 82 per cent; The total number of employees at universities and university colleges increased by 37 per cent; The number of professorships more than doubled and the number of assistant professors rose by 35 percent

An increase in staff numbers and in the composition of the research workforce means a larger proportion of resources is spent on salaries. At the same time, an ever smaller share of funding is being used for investment in capital equipment. In 1997 such expenditure constituted 6.4 per cent of total R&D costs, by 2005 the share had shrunk to 3.9 per cent.

“These figures explain why many researchers today feel their economic conditions are deteriorating: quite simply, more people are sharing the resources,” says Pär Omling, Director General of the Swedish Research Council.