What are our plans for UiA?

We want everyone to find it meaningful to contribute to strengthening UiA in the years to come.

The course has been set for the first part of the period as the current strategy is due to end in 2024. We have come a long way, but a lot of work remains to be done. In addition, UiA has recently entered into a new development agreement with the Ministry of Education. This also shapes our priorities going forward. Both the strategy and the development agreement are firmly rooted in the organisation, and the work towards these goals contributes to both predictability and long-term planning.

Having said that, we need to recognise that a number of external factors will affect us in the future. The education minister has announced an extreme makeover of the sector with 15 points. In this connection, more white papers will be published during 2023 and 2024 which could have major consequences for us. There will be changes to the funding system, changes to the admission criteria for higher education, tuition fees for students outside the EEA and Switzerland, changes to both the Research Council and the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, to mention some of what is on the horizon.

See also: Meet the new rector team 

We do not know what the overall outcome of these changes will be, but we are entering a period with more political intervention than we are used to. Therefore we must together navigate the UiA ship in unknown waters.

One thing that is quite certain is that we are entering a time of austerity. It is an important goal for us that we prepare well to meet this challenge. We are already in the process of systematising the work on external funding and strategic partnerships with both public and private actors. We must also be prepared that lifelong learning will become a significantly larger part of our activity in the future in the form of flexible continuing education offers. This must be incorporated into our regular activity to a much greater extent than it is today.

When it comes to our degree students on campus, it will be important to continue working to reduce dropout rates. A fantastic job has been done by the faculties introducing a mentoring programme for first year students, among other things. Reducing dropouts is important, both for the individual student and UiA's financial sustainability. We also want to help ensure that our students become involved in both research and innovation projects during their studies. Furthermore, we want to support the student organisation in its efforts to increase participation in student-initiated activities. Our students should be able to look back on their time at UiA as a time of learning, education and wellbeing.

On the research and development side, we have worked actively in recent years to create good framework conditions for our academic staff. We have developed good support functions, especially for research applications, and have adopted new principles and guidelines for the distribution of R&D time. The work to further develop the framework conditions for R&D work will continue to be important, and much of this will be followed up through the Action Plan for Research, Artistic Development Work and Innovation (2023-2025) which was adopted last autumn by the University Board.

The goals and measures in the action plan must support and realise the goals of the current strategy, with a special focus on quality, visibility and relevance. We will therefore continue to emphasise how we will support and contribute to quality in research and create a strong culture for research and artistic development work throughout the organisation. Support services and skills development are central elements to this; and concretely, this means that we will work to further improve the processes linked to project development, but also the organisation, implementation and management of R&D projects.

Another important element in relation to this is our employees' opportunities for career development. We have established career development programmes for both associate professor and professor, we are working to create an arena for developing the role of professor (research management and mentor role), and we are preparing a comprehensive plan for career development in line with the principles that we have adopted by signing the DORA declaration and COARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment). In addition, it will be important to work on competence development throughout the organisation, as it is in the interaction between good administration and scientific creativity that we achieve quality and added value.

This will all contribute to developing the university's overall expertise and R&D capacity, which is a prerequisite for being able to deliver good R&D in the form of projects, publications, teaching and other forms of dissemination of knowledge.

Visibility and positioning are also important keywords in our work going forward. We have worked well in the regional arena in recent years and now have a strong position as an important partner in major regional initiatives such as health and living conditions, renewable energy and business development. Nationally and internationally, we have more work to do. That is why it will be important in the future to help our research environments distinguish themselves on a national and international arena, be heard, and gain entry into collaborative coalitions with strong and influential R&D actors. In this way we can continue to build UiA as a strong R&D-based university, build a strong reputation, attract new employees, and not least, future students.

If we are to win the competition to attract future students, we must have strong academic environments, but also the ability to promote them through quality dissemination and strategic positioning, nationally and internationally.

The universities’ social contribution is an important topic, and in the University and University Colleges Act it is stated that our purpose as a university is to contribute to environmental, social and economic sustainable development (section 1-1, d). This of course applies to our entire social responsibility, but we want to highlight some important things that we will work on in the future to fulfil this purpose.

First, we must focus on the connection between our research activity and our teaching. If we are to ensure that our study programmes have high quality, high relevance, and are up to date, we also need to work on the relationship between research and education. The foundation of the university is that we deliver research-based education and equip our students with the best, most up-to-date and most relevant knowledge available at any given time. We often take this connection for granted because it is in the universities' DNA, but we believe that it will be important to focus actively on this to ensure that the knowledge we create through our R&D activity is also communicated to, and becomes a value for, our students - and thus an important contribution to societal development through their expertise.

Second, we know that the major societal challenges we face such as democracy, education, climate, health, digitalisation, etc., call for different forms and combinations of expertise. That is why we have defined six interdisciplinary societal challenges in our current strategy, where we see that we can contribute to societal development through our research, our artistic development work, our teaching, and our dissemination. We want to carry this forward in the coming period.

Third, there is an expectation of the universities (cf. the University and University Colleges Act, section 1-3, e) that we should contribute to innovation and value creation. We are already doing this, not least by equipping our students with knowledge and skills which are prerequisites for new thinking and innovation. There is also an expectation that we will contribute to innovation through our research and artistic development work, either in the form of new knowledge that business and social actors can use as a basis for their innovation activity, or in the form of research results that can be further developed to become specific services and products. We have kept this topic high on the agenda in the current period, and it is something that we will continue to work on over the next four years.

As mentioned at the outset, there are a number of factors over which we have no control. We are entering a time where we will have to make tough priorities. It is important for us that these priorities are anchored in the organisation as much as possible, and that we can have open discussions about the way forward. We will therefore continue the practice of meetings with the departments and divisions in the next period.

We look forward to further developing the university in close consultation with all our talented UiA employees.