SHARE
COPY LINK

EDUCATION

Global list ranks Karolinska university best in Sweden

Karolinska Institute has climbed four places to 44th in the annual Shanghai Ranking, while two other Swedish universities also feature in the global top 100.

Global list ranks Karolinska university best in Sweden
Karolinska Institute. Photo: Izabelle Nordfjell/TT

Harvard University remains the world’s best university for the 14th year, on a list dominated by American universities. Two British universities, Cambridge and Oxford, also make the top ten alongside US powerhouses Stanford, Berkeley, MIT and Princeton. 

Among the top Swedish performers, Karolinska jumped to 44th, while Uppsala University rose one place to 60th, and Stockholm University fell from 77th to 81st. 

Further down the list were Lund University (101-150), the University of Gothenburg (151-200), Chalmers University of Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (201-300), Linköping University, Umeå University (301-400), and Stockholm School of Economics (401-500). 

Tomas Ahlbäck, a spokesman for Karolinska, said the university was not getting overly excited. 

“Few universities get too fixated on rankings. They don’t give a full picture of a university’s quality,” he told news agency TT. 

Asked if he was surprised that the university had risen in the ranking despite the high-profile sacking of the Italian surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, Ahlbäck said: “No, not at all. KI’s operations are much bigger than that.”

Anders Malmberg, the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Uppsala University, was also taking the ranking with a pinch of salt. 

“These ranking lists have become a big industry and they’re not meaningless. At the same time the things being evaluated are hard to measure,” he told TT. 

The Shanghai Ranking, compiled by the Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, examines the performance of 12,000 universities worldwide.

It rates universities according to a formula based on the number of articles they have published in prestigious academic journals, the number of highly-cited researchers working there, the number of Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals (in mathematics) won and the per-capita academic performance of each institution.

For members

EDUCATION

Inquiry calls for free after-school care for 6-9 year-olds in Sweden

Children between ages 6-9 years should be allowed admittance to after-school recreation centers free of charge, according to a report submitted to Sweden’s Minister of Education Lotta Edholm (L).

Inquiry calls for free after-school care for 6-9 year-olds in Sweden

“If this reform is implemented, after-school recreation centers will be accessible to the children who may have the greatest need for the activities,” said Kerstin Andersson, who was appointed to lead a government inquiry into expanding access to after-school recreation by the former Social Democrat government. 

More than half a million primary- and middle-school-aged children spend a large part of their school days and holidays in after-school centres.

But the right to after-school care is not freely available to all children. In most municipalities, it is conditional on the parent’s occupational status of working or studying. Thus, attendance varies and is significantly lower in areas where unemployment is high and family finances weak.

In this context, the previous government formally began to inquire into expanding rights to leisure. The report was recently handed over to Sweden’s education minister, Lotta Edholm, on Monday.

Andersson proposed that after-school activities should be made available free of charge to all children between the ages of six and nine in the same way that preschool has been for children between the ages of three and five. This would mean that children whose parents are unemployed, on parental leave or long-term sick leave will no longer be excluded. 

“The biggest benefit is that after-school recreation centres will be made available to all children,” Andersson said. “Today, participation is highest in areas with very good conditions, while it is lower in sparsely populated areas and in areas with socio-economic challenges.” 

Enforcing this proposal could cause a need for about 10,200 more places in after-school centre, would cost the state just over half a billion kronor a year, and would require more adults to work in after-school centres. 

Andersson recommends recruiting staff more broadly, and not insisting that so many staff are specialised after-school activities teachers, or fritidspedagod

“The Education Act states that qualified teachers are responsible for teaching, but that other staff may participate,” Andersson said. “This is sometimes interpreted as meaning that other staff may be used, but preferably not’. We propose that recognition be given to so-called ‘other staff’, and that they should be given a clear role in the work.”

She suggested that people who have studied in the “children’s teaching and recreational programmes” at gymnasium level,  people who have studied recreational training, and social educators might be used. 

“People trained to work with children can contribute with many different skills. Right now, it might be an uncertain work situation for many who work for a few months while the employer is looking for qualified teachers”, Andersson said. 

SHOW COMMENTS