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2021. Increased saved capital for the University
Increased saved capital
The University of Gothenburg has achieved its educational mandate for the first time in eight years.
At the same time, most of the indications show that the university will also have a surplus this year and thereby increase its saved capital.
IT IS ESTIMATED that there will be a surplus of SEK 30 million for the entire year. It is better than expected and is mainly due to improved educational performance, an increased income from grants and lower costs than planned. This was evident from the financial follow-up carried out after the first eight months of the year, the so-called four-monthly report, which was presented to the University Board in mid-October. – I am most pleased about the fact that the university is fulfilling its educational mandate, says CFO Peter Tellberg.
All the faculties, except the Sahlgrenska Academy, will achieve their educational mandates.
However, this year’s forecast of plus SEK 30 million should be taken with a pinch of salt, Peter Tellberg emphasizes.
– CONSIDERING THAT we have a turnover of SEK 7 billion, 30 million is relatively little. Although I’m sure it will be a positive result, the question is by how much.
The follow-up shows that personnel costs have increased by SEK 77 million, but that is not due to having more employees, says Peter Tellberg. – We have seen a very small decrease compared to the same period last year. It may sound a little strange that we have achieved our mandate for the first time in eight years, at the same time as we were given extended mandates this year, but without hiring more lecturers.
One of the bright spots is that research grants are continuing to increase, especially from Swedish donors.
– It is an improvement of 25 percent. The Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation accounts for the largest increase, 66 million, followed by the Swedish Cancer Society with 22 million. The fact that research income is increasing, as well as the fact that we are accepting more students, can be seen as a quality indicator.
This means that the balanced capital has been replenished by an estimated SEK 30 million and that at the end of the year it will amount to just over SEK 1.2 billion. The vast majority of this money, around SEK 900 million, is designated for research assignments that have not yet been completed.
BUT PETER TELLBERG does not believe that the coronavirus pandemic will have a major effect on the finances. – A surprisingly small effect actually. It was thought that it would have a significant impact, but it has not.
One fear was that there would be significantly fewer foreign, fee-paying students at the University of Gothenburg but that did not happen. There has only been a small decrease compared to 2019.
Although the financial situation is generally stable, there are considerable differences between faculties, departments and research groups. The Faculty of Humanities is still experiencing a tough financial situation. Last year, the University Board decided to contribute SEK 10 million per year for the period 2021–2023 to cope with the adjustment and the sharp increase in rental costs. Although the latest follow-up shows a rapid recovery. From having budgeted a result of minus SEK 17 million, the forecast is now down to minus SEK 3 million for the entire year.
– THE FACULTY HAS worked extremely hard and is almost in balance. On the research side, things are looking good, but the main explanation is the increased influx of students. Courses that
PETER TELLBERG are almost full in terms of student numbers have a very positive effect on the finances.
The Joint Administration is also in a difficult situation. The forecast points to a deficit of SEK 31 million, which is SEK 7 million more than planned. – This did not happen overnight. The Joint Administration has had increased costs over time, which has coincided with an extended mandate that does not align with their current budget.
AN EXTERNAL auditor will investigate the current model for financing the Joint Administration and University Library for the financial year 2022. Furthermore, a savings requirement of SEK 30 million has been imposed on the Joint Administration for the period 2021–2022, which corresponds to savings of 6.4 percent. – It is probably not such a good idea to do both of these right now, Peter Tellberg points out.
Despite a positive result, there are challenges and the situation remains uncertain. This primarily applies to the content of the Research and Innovation Bill that will be coming in November. – It might provide great opportunities, but the risk is that the money will be coming towards the end of the year, and that we do not have time to distribute it and use it in time.
Allan Eriksson
Facts
PREDICTIONS FOR 2020 (MILLIONS CROWNS)
Faculty of Humanities Faculty of Social Sciences School of Business, Economics and Law Faculty of Education Faculty of Science Sahlgrenska Academy Faculty of FIne Arts IT-Faculty Central Administration -3 18 -7 16 5 30 -5 -4 -31
Odontology top-ranked again
RANKING. In this year’s subject ranking from the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also called the Shanghai ranking, the University of Gothenburg’s Institute of Odontology was in the top ranking in the Dentistry & Oral Science category. This means that the research ranking at the Institute of Odontology has climbed from 26th place last year to 18th place this year. It is the highest ranking for the University of Gothenburg, and the Institute also obtained the highest ranking of the leading universities in Sweden. – Our high ranking, seen from a local, national and international perspective, is the result of hard work from all the Institute’s employees. You could question measurement methods and indicators that form the basis for this ranking, but it is nevertheless considered a prestigious list, says the Head of the Institute, Peter Lingström.
Strategies and goals in progress
VISION. What goals and strategies should the university have? We have been preoccupied with that question since the vision was established in mid-April. Among other things, it is about developing a number of overall focus areas. – The strategies will act as support for the development of our operations and will be evaluated after a three-year period, explains Deputy Vice-Chancellor Fredrika Lagergren Wahlin.
OMVÄRLDEN ORGANISATIONENETT UNIVERSITET FÖR VÄRLDEN
VETENSKAPSSAMHÄLLET
The new vision, A University for the World, forms the basis for the development of the strategy that is now underway. An initial proposal was presented to the Board on September 8. It has since been discussed in the Department Management Council, at the Vice Chancellor’s strategy meeting and in operational discussions where the university’s management meets the faculty management. – The vision spans a 10-year period, but the goals and strategies span a three-year period, explains Fredrika Lagergren Wahlin, convener of the vision’s project management. We have had intense discussions about what the university should focus on. The strategies are supposed to help us move forward, but they do not involve things we have to do anyway as a public body. The new vision also clearly points to the importance of autonomy and academic freedom. Therefore, we should not centrally be telling the rest of organisation what to do. Instead, the common strategies should be based on certain overall po-
VISION 2030 1
sitions or focus areas, for example the future management of our skills supply. Departments and faculties must then be able to link their own operational strategies to the common strategy.
After three years, the strategies will be followed up at the same time as the next three-year period commences.
The strategies must also be supplemented with university-wide one-year operational plans. Departments and faculties must also be able to combine these with their own plans. – Discussions on strategies, goals and operational plans will continue at various levels during the autumn. The Board is expected to make a decision at the beginning of December, Fredrika Lagergren Wahlin explains.
Find out more about the vision here: https://medarbetarportalen.gu.se/organisation/Visionsarbete. len.gu.se/organisation/Visionsarbete.
The RED 19 report now available in print
REPORT. The RED 19 report has now been printed and will be distributed within the university over the coming weeks. Research Evaluation for Development 2019 (RED 19) is a quality assessment that focuses on improving research and research environments. It is in line with the goal in Vision 2020 that the university’s research should be of a high international standard and quality. The purpose of RED 19 is to identify conditions and strategies that enable and create good research environments. The process and outcome of the assessment will contribute to the quality development of the university’s research and will function as an important instrument for management and governance. The panel reports have previously been published online. If you have any questions or would like to obtain your own copy of the RED 19 report, contact Mattias Lindgren Sandgren at the Grants and Innovation Office, email, mattias.lindgren@gu.se.
Reduction in air travel
ENVIRONMENT. At the University of Gothenburg, it is clear that air travel has decreased dramatically. In total, the aviation industry has declined by almost 80 percent during the period from March to September this year. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions from air travel have plummeted by 75 percent and are down to record low levels, after steadily increasing for decades. Last year, at the same point in time, the cost of air travel for employees was SEK 24.6 million and this year that figure is SEK 5.3 million. – All forms of travel have decreased. The positive thing is that flights to Stockholm have decreased by 90 percent, which is in line with our policy. But you could ask the question how well we are managing the task of educating and researching when we can no longer travel in the same way as before, says Fredrik Högberg, Environmental Coordinator at the Gothenburg Centre for Sustainable Development (GMV).
You might think that this has led to an increase in the number of train journeys, but this is not the case, he points out. – Train travel has decreased by 80 percent. Rather, it has led to an explosion in the use of digital tools, which also lead to carbon dioxide emissions.
Are we Zooming ourselves to death?
Whether reduced air travel will have any effects over time is unclear, says Fredrik Högberg.
Photo: NIKLAS MAUPOIX
FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Due to the hardening climate for freedom of expression in large parts of the world, not least noticeably these days in Belarus, this year’s book fair in Gothenburg concluded with an exclusive interview with Svetlana Aleksievich on the theme of freedom of speech and literature. Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of a democratic society – and what significance can a writer have in its development? The initiator of the interview was the Jonsered Manor – intellectual centre and the University of Gothenburg’s special meeting place for collaboration – together with interviewer Johan Öberg, former cultural advisor at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow and most recently research advisor at the Faculty of Arts. Fredrika Lagergren Wahlin, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Collaboration, also took part and she emphasized the importance of safeguarding both academic freedom and freedom of expression in a less tolerant world.
Do not forget your gifts and rewards
NOR. On September 24, the Vice-Chancellor decided that gifts awarded in connection with the ceremony for Diligent and Devoted Service to the Realm must be collected within two years. The reason being that the number of gifts that have not been collected, is growing year by year. – What we think is strange is that the recipients have taken the time to select and notify us of which gift they want, but then they have not picked them up. Most people receive their gifts at the ceremony in February, but contacting us and picking them up afterwards has always worked well, says Carina Elmäng at Academic Ceremonies.
The gifts are chosen by the Swedish Agency for Government Employers, but it is up to each authority to decide for how long the gifts will be kept. Do you have a gift you have not collected? Contact Academic Ceremonies: hogtider@gu.se
You can choose from: gold medal, gold wristwatch (men’s watch/women’s watch) or the following items from Orrefors Kosta Boda: cut crystal bowl, engraved crystal bowl, sculpture/Billgren, or sculpture/ Vallien.
Open to the unimagined
– We must prepare for the unexpected, says Jonas Simonson. He is the new professor at the Academy of Music and Drama and a freelance flautist. The prepared unforeseen happens when he improvises with other musicians.
But in other areas of life as well, it is important to be able to handle the unexpected – for example when a pandemic strikes.
Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg
E MEET IN the Green Room at Konstepidemin, an area where Jonas Simonson lives when he is not lecturing at the Academy of Music and Drama. He rummages around in a box of flutes that he always brings with him when he is on tour; they include a Härjedalspipa (a Swedish traditional fipple flute), a månmarkapipa (also a fipple flute) and a double willow flute. In the end, he chooses an instrument made of drainpipes – French drainpipes, he explains. – The flute is one of the world’s oldest instruments. Outside the city of Ulm in southern Germany, a bone flute was found that is at least 35,000 years old. But people probably played on wood or reed pipes much further back than that. Neuroscientists believe that culture, not least music and dance, was what made us the social beings we are. We have always come together to sing and play – especially when it comes to important things, such as weddings and funerals. The music opens us up to something bigger than when we just spend time together; we gain access to other emotional states and depths within us that provide belonging and context. While he is talking, Jonas Simonson puts the flute together and lifts it to his lips. When he starts to play the room starts to swing. Folk-rock jazz, I would probably call it, but Jonas Simonson explains that it is a Halling improvisation. However, he thinks that what genre a piece of music belongs to is less important. – People have a need to categorize and divide things up, but life is often more complicated. The term “folk music” was coined by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder at the end of the 18th century. He believed that the music of the peasant population of a certain area was connected with the soul of that community in some way. This was at the start of the period of national romanticism when a privileged class decided what was to be included as part of the folk tradition and where female musicians were excluded. But even if a tradition can have regional origins, it has nothing to do with nations themselves. It is not the case that the music south of Svinesund is particularly different to the music a little further north, or that musicians from Skåne have more contact with people from the north of Sweden than with musicians from the other side of the strait.
NEITHER IS FOLK music a museum artefact consisting of voiced sound that should be preserved for posterity, but rather something that is constantly changing and influenced by many centuries of tradition as well as by what is happening in society right now. – The folk music that I started to be interested in at the beginning of the 1980s has gone through tremendous change and today consists of music that we could not even imagine would be created. Nowadays, there is an entirely different level of acceptance regarding what different musical expressions can be included in the concept. The musical philosopher Lydia Goehr talks about “open concepts”, a term that, depending on the context and the place, is defined differently and constantly changing over time.
Jonas Simonson was 21 years old when he came in contact with the folk music group Groupa. – I grew up in Skara, my mother was a physiotherapist and my father was a priest, which meant that I was introduced to church music at a young age. I went to the municipal music school and played the flute, that was the only class available, as the guitar and drum classes were full. Music school was excellent at that time and was like an after-school club where me and my friends used to hang out. Eventually, I went on to study at Ljungskile adult education college, then I studied for two years at the College of Music here in Gothenburg, but I felt I wanted to do something different. Coming into contact with Groupa opened up a whole new world for me and got me interested in the particular style of playing that is inherent to folk music. I started to listen to the old phonograph recordings of folk music and became interested in how that type of tradition could develop.
SINCE THEN, Jonas Simonson has played in a number of ensembles and diverse constellations, including the groups Bäsk, Kapell Frisell, Sångensemblen Amanda, Zephyr and the Crane Dance Trio. He has demonstrated that it is possible to marry very different musical styles through his collaboration with the bass player Anders Jormin and the organist Karin Nelson, both of whom are colleagues at the Academy of Music and Drama. In collaboration with the band Den Fule (The Ugly), he has also produced a CD together with the Senegalese duo Solo and Adama Cissokho and the Canadian spoken -word artist Sofia Baig. – That project entailed allowing the different musical expressions to meld together to create something new and unexpected. What interests me most, is just that type of context, where tradition, improvisation and composition interact to create the prepared unforeseen.
Since the beginning of 2001 until very recently, Jonas Simonson was the programme manager for the world culture programme at the Academy of Music and Drama. He is also involved in the development of different feedback methods, such as the Critical Response Process, created by the American choreographer Liz Lerman.
– IT INVOLVES DIVIDING up the feedback into different stages in order to understand what is most beneficial for the person receiving the response. The method was created for the artistic sector but can actually be used in all kinds of processes that require a friendly critical voice. It has been used together with communicators at the Academy of Music and Drama and with managers at Friskis och Svettis.
The pandemic and the requirement to work from home have obviously made it difficult to give really good feedback to the students, says Jonas Simonson. – In particular, the ensemble playing has been affected. Instead, we have spent a lot of time on recording and studio techniques, which is also important. We also have a number of courses on the theme The World of the Freelancer, as life as a freelancer will be the reality for most of our students. At the moment, these courses feel almost cynical. It was difficult trying to make a living as a musician even before the pandemic, but now it is virtually impossible. I have friends who have rented or even sold their apartments in order to be able to survive financially. If we want to retain cultural diversity, we have to examine how grants are allocated and greatly increase them to freelancers and to those who arrange live events in which freelancers perform.
We could also do what they have done in Norway. At many major public events, for example the official opening of a power station or the like, the première of a work commissioned for the occasion is often incorporated. It is a way of creating interest in and engagement for contemporary music, which Sweden could learn from.
As a professor, Jonas Simonson will have more time for research. – Art has always challenged, examined the potential for new directions and contained strong reflections. I would say that artistic research has built on the handson traditions that are accommodated within the various artistic disciplines. It involves watching and describing how the actual execution becomes a creative process. It teaches us more about art and the creative process, and contributes to an increased understanding of how these events develop and for the role and function of art in society.
WHAT ARTISTIC RESEARCH involves is still fervently debated, decades after the term was coined. – To a great extent, artistic research is about the process, about how a problem is processed and how different strategies can influence it. I am currently working on a solo project where I am investigating how my flutes can be used in the interface between improvisation, composition and traditional music. Everything I have done so far has been done in interaction with the audience, and for me it is important to continue to do so, I want to be relevant outside academia as well.
The significance of interplay, with other musicians as well as with the audience, has perhaps become even more evident when, because of the pandemic, we have not been able to meet in the same way as we did before, Jonas Simonson points out. – That was particularly evident during the Göteborg Folk Festival in collaboration with Internationella Spelmansstämman at Konstepidemin at the beginning of September, where corona restrictions were in place. Both the musicians and the public were delighted, this was really something that everyone had been longing for! Playing together means a party, a celebration, jamming, something that is fun to be part of . But it is more than that; a need that is about our actual human nature and which is a way to make us practise encountering the prepared unforeseen, which is what life is all about.
Jonas Simonson Latest achievement: New Professor of Musical Performance at the Academy of Music and Drama. Role: He lectures in ensemble, music theory and individual teaching. Has previously worked as a flute and ensemble teacher at the Royal College of Music, Ingesund College of Music, Malmö Academy of Music, University College of Music Education in Stockholm and the Danish National Academy of Music. Plays in the following bands Groupa, Zephyr, Tuultenpesä and Jormin/Nelsson/Simonson. Has previously played in Den Fule, Bäsk, Kapell Frisell and Sångensemblen Amanda.
The five different criteria or definitions of folk music, according to the musician Per
Gudmundson: Social demarcation, geographic demarcation, unknown composer, musical style, and the passing on of music down through the generations.
