Hans Adolfsson: New year, new opportunities

I have now served as President of Stockholm University for exactly one year, and many people, both at the University and outside, ask me whether much has changed during the more than eight and a half years I spent working in Umeå. My answer has been that many things remain the same, but it would of course be strange if a great deal had not changed over that period as well. I will not attempt to list everything that has changed, but there have been many organisational changes, including the formation of new departments, and that the university is now part of both an international alliance, CIVIS, and a national alliance, Stockholm Trio, with our closest university neighbours, Karolinska Institutet and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. National and international collaborations make us stronger as educational institutions and create opportunities for new research and educational collaborations. We are likely to see more of the latter, not least as a result of the higher entry requirements that will apply to teacher education programmes in the future.

What, then, can we expect from the year ahead? Personally, I am very pleased that the Government has now finally appointed an inquiry on the future legal and organisational status of higher education institutions. Readers with a good memory may recall that in the final “Words from the management” column of 2025, I wrote that I would very much welcome this as a Christmas present. The decision to launch the inquiry came somewhat later, in January, but there is no reason for disappointment. On the contrary, we should be pleased that it was established at all, given the opposition it encountered when the proposal was discussed in the Swedish Parliament’s Committee on Education. The current agency model, which applies to 31 of Sweden’s higher education institutions, does not function entirely satisfactorily if we are to fulfil our mission of delivering research and education of the highest possible quality. Universities and higher education institutions carry a significant responsibility to contribute new knowledge for the development of society, as well as to ensure the supply and development of skills required for a well-functioning public sector. In order to meet this responsibility, we as universities and university colleges must also have real authority over our own activities and be able to decide for ourselves how best to carry out this important mission. The Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions (SUHF) has long argued for strengthening academic freedom and institutional autonomy for Sweden’s higher education institutions. The inquiry, led by Kerstin Jacobsson, University Director at KTH, has been tasked with “as a first solution model, presenting proposals for an alternative organisational form for state universities and colleges, and as a second solution model, presenting proposals for changes that can be implemented to improve effectiveness within the framework of the current agency model”. The inquiry is to submit its final report by 31 March 2027, and we look forward to engaging in a constructive dialogue with Kerstin and the rest of her inquiry team over the coming year.

During 2026, we will also continue with the department visits we began last autumn. We have visited almost the entire Faculty of Social Sciences and, during the spring, we will visit departments within the Faculties of Humanities and Law. Towards the summer, we will begin our first visits to departments within the Faculty of Science. These visits are of great value to us in the university management, and we look forward to many stimulating discussions about all of the university’s activities and the challenges associated with them. Welcome in 2026.

This text is written by President Hans Adolfsson. It appears in the section “Words from the Management”, in which members of the university’s management team take turns to write about topical issues. The section appears in News for staff which is distributed to the entirety of the University staff.