At home in two cultures

More should venture out news 4

o n ly 5 p e rc e n t t r Av e l A b roA d I s yo u r d n A g o o d e n o u g h?

ranking is here to staynews 8

how much do we want to know?news 12

Andrea castro is passionate about latin American literature feAture 9

Ac c e p t t h e l I st s!

UNIVERSITY OFGOTHENBURG

n u m b e r 1 | f e b r u a r y/ m a r c h 2 0 1 1

2 g u j o u r n a l e n 6 | 1 0

nyheternotIser

2 g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1

Reg.nr: 3750M

Reg.nr: S-000256

words from Vice- chancellor

UNIVERSITY OFGOTHENBURG

a few words from the editorial staff

feb–marse d i t o r - i n c h i e f & p u b l i s h e rallan eriksson 031 - 786 10 21 allan.eriksson@gu.sef e at u r e e d i t o reva Lundgren 031 - 786 10 81 eva.lundgren@gu.sep h o t o g r a p h y & r e p r o d u c t i o nJohan Wingborg 031 - 786 29 29 johan.wingborg@gu.sep h o t o g r a p h y e d i t o rmattias Jacobsson 031 - 786 57 06 mattias.jacobsson@gu.seg r a p h i c d e s i g n & l ayo u tanders eurén björn S eriksson r e p o r t e r smagnus Pettersson Torsten arpi, ulf bjereld, claes martinson, martin Dackling, marie norman, erik Gustafsson, erik Strandmark and eva Jonson.t r a n s l at i o nJanet Vesterlund p r o o f r e a d i n grobert Ohlson, Välskrivet i Göteborg

a d d r e s sGu Journalen, university of Gothenburg box 100, 405 30 Gothenburg e - m a i lgu-journalen@gu.sei n t e r n e twww.gu-journalen.gu.sep r i n t i n gGeson hylte Tryck c i r c u l at i o n6 200 copiesi s s n 1402-9626p u b l i c at i o n7 issues/year. The next issue will come out on march 30, 2011. l a s t d at e f o r m a n u s c r i p t smarch 11, 2011m at e r i a lWe do not take responsibility for unordered material. The editorial staff does not take responsibility for anonymous material.

feel free to use quotes but give your source.c h a n g e o f a d d r e s sInform the editorial staff in writing of a change of address.c o V e randrea castro, lecturer in Spanish, Department of Language and Literature. Photography: Johan Wingborg

A new spAper for employees of the universit y of GothenburG

w e lc o m e to a n e w issue of GU Journal and an exciting spring term. The Journal is also on Facebook, where you can give your comments and exchange thoughts about the Journal or give tips to the editorial staff. An advantage is that all fans of the newspaper can read it before everyone else. GU Journal is also an interactive pdf newspaper at site: http://issuu.com/university-ofgothenburg. You’ll also find a short version of GU Journal in English and GU Spegeln. Another good initiative on Fackbook is the Högskoleläckan group (a closed group) that Ulf Dalnäs has started. There has been a steady flow of interesting contributions and opinions, which shows the strength of Facebook as an interactive forum. Apply to become a member of the group! It has

been considerably more difficult to get a discussion going about the proposal for a new re-organisation. Not a single contribution had come in by the time of GU Journal’s deadline. A debate will hopefully start, but experience shows that there’s a psychological hinder if it’s necessary to log in (in this case in the employee portal).

t h i s i s s u e h a s an international theme: we write about mobility, rank-ing and foreign students applying to the University and we give a portrait of Andrea Castro from Buenos Aires. We speak a great deal about the importance of greater international exchange, and a large portion of the research at the University is inter-national, but much more can be done

to increase the exchange of teachers and students.

w e ’ d l i k e to take the opportunity to give our thanks for the tips, even the anonymous ones, that come to the editorial office. It seems to be a trend that many people do not want to give their names and this may possibly be because many feel that there are things that can’t be said at the University of Gothenburg. While we’re happy to receive anonymous tips, it does make our journalistic work more difficult.

Even if we don’t have the time to write about all the suggestions we get in the same issue, we save the ideas for future issues.

eVa lundgren & allan eriksson

w e h aV e a n e xc i t i n g year ahead of us. Many things are in progress. The Board decided in the middle of December on a new strategic plan – Quality and Renewal – for the University of Gothenburg. The new strategic plan for 2011-2012 is our absolutely most important document in terms of point-ing out our direction for these years. It describes not only the strategic priori-ties in our core activities of research and education but also our cooperation and work with support activities.

There is often a great amount of work involving many people behind all strategic plans. The best plans suc-ceed in a limited space at capturing and communicating a common picture of the way forward, regardless of whether it has to do with a company or, as in our case, a university. In my opinion, our new strategic plan does that. All employees have received a copy of the plan. Don’t let it gather dust on your desk – read it.

b u t i t i s n ’ t e n o u g h to be good at developing nice plans and making sure we read them. What has to be done is to put words into action. It is every-one’s responsibility to help. The overall purpose of our strategies is to create a unified university with activities that hold a high quality. Ultimately it has to do with strengthening the University of Gothenburg’s competitiveness nation-ally and globally at the same time that

we take responsibility for the region in which we work.

We’ve also worked with the organi-sational changes. At the moment there remain a couple of weeks to give opin-ions about the proposal that was sent out at the end of January. To get as high participation as possible we chose to send it for consideration in a broad way – about 80 authorities have been asked to respond to the proposal. We’re also prepared for a great deal of work in taking care of the responses that come in. Everyone who wishes shall have gotten the opportunity to give opinions before the basic document concerning the chief principles of the new organisa-tion, in a re-worked form, goes to the Board for a decision on April 7.

s o m e t i m e s i h e a r my colleagues all around the organisation heave a sigh over the large number of projects that are ongoing at the same time at the University of Gothenburg. It isn’t diffi-cult to agree with them, but at the same time it’s important to see how much of what is happening is related. An example is RED10, our comprehensive research evaluation that will be pre-sented in the middle of March. Together with the newly started examination of education programs, BLUE11, and the ongoing investigation of the innova-tion system, the results will form one of the cornerstones of the comprehen-sive work on visions that has already

started on a small scale. Vision2020, as it’s been christened, will form the basis for a new, long-term strategy for the University of Gothenburg and will include a number of seminars at which different themes about the university of the future will be discussed. This will start later in the spring.

As I said, a great deal is happening and many important decisions will be made during 2011. At the end of the year I believe that we will have come considerably closer to a common goal – a unified University of Gothenburg.

pam fredman

new strategic plan points out the course for the next two years

contents

g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1 3

4 Mobility without measurable goalsAdministrators have discovered erasmus but only 5 percent of the student body travel to another country. it’s a little better among teachers.

7 1.5 billion in unused resourcesthat corresponds to every other research crown. financial director lars nilsson wants to see powerful efforts.

6 A more unified universitythe proposal for a new organisa-tion is based on strengthening quality at the university. A deci-sion will come in April.

8 Accept the lists!no one likes it, but ranking is here to stay. A new report has come out.

9 fascinated by the fantasticAndrea Castro reads books that enchant her.

12 gene technology of the futureDo we want to know whether we belong to a group at risk of a fatal illness? ethics researchers answer our questions.

14 drastic reduction in applicationstuition fees have scared many students away and it isn’t clear how many will actually start at the university of Gothenburg in the fall.

15 discover the AntarcticCome along on research vessel oden on its way to the Antarctic. the crew kept a blog during the whole trip and Gu Journal made a few visits.

9

7 15

12

4 g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1

official statistics show that 408 stu­dents left sweden last year for another country. but this is only students that are registered in ladok. in fact, many more study abroad. at least 1 800 stu­dents leave for some form of exchange or training. that means that 5 percent of students do some of their studies abroad.

to m a s l a r s s o n , student representative in the University’s internationalisation coun-cil thinks that that isn’t enough.

“I think that’s a ridiculously low num-ber. All students at some time during their studies should have an opportunity to attend schools outside the country. Doing foreign studies is an important experience

included as many students as possible: in Erasmus, bilateral agreements, short field studies and training. Still, it’s only 5 per-cent of all students.

There is no official goal for how much the exchange should increase, according to Pernilla Danielsson, international coor-dinator.

“It can be much better, but we shouldn’t chain ourselves to Erasmus exchanges. Student mobility can be increased by look-ing at the courses that are offered and at the possibilities that teachers have to hold a course week in Birmingham or offer a training period in Uganda. It’s also very important that we work on internationali-sation here at home, I mean, that we invite the world to the University of Gothenburg for those students who can’t travel abroad.

news

Mobility without concrete goals

5 percent of students travel to other countries to study

Since a central register doesn’t exist today and not all types of exchanges are reported, we don’t know how large the exchange actually is.

120 60 0 60 120 180

30

30

0

60

30 30 90 150 90 150

60

120 60 0 60 120 180 30 30 90 150 90 150

60

30

0

30

60

Equator Equator Equator

Tropic of Capricorn (23°27') Tropic of Capricorn (23°27')

Antarctic Circle (66°33') Antarctic Circle (66°33')

Tropic of Cancer (23°27') Tropic of Cancer (23°27')

Arctic Circle (66°33') Arctic Circle (66°33')

ARCTIC OCEAN ARCTIC OCEAN

Japan

Hudson Bay

Black Sea

Philippine

Sea

N O R T H

P A C I F I C

O C E A N

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S O U T H P A C I F I C

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Lake Superior

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East Siberian Sea

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Gulf of Mexico

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Alexandria

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New York

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Taipei

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Odesa

Kolkata

Karachi

Ho Chi Minh City

Belfast

Saint Petersburg

Marseille

Barcelona

Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Surabaya

Alice Springs

Hyderabad

Ahmadabad

Bangalore

Kanpur

Mumbai

Chongqing

Yokohama Osaka Pusan

Bandung

Lahore

Belo Horizonte

Pôrto Alegre

Fortaleza

Dallas

Minneapolis

Detroit

Philadelphia

Boston

Guadalajara

Puebla

Edmonton

Cali

Milan

Kharkiv

Aleppo

- -

-

- -

Medellín

-

Tombouctou

Chennai

Walvis Bay

Barrow

Chengdu Tijuana

Seattle

Hamburg

Ürümqi

Khabarovsk

Brisbane

Whitehorse

Belgrade

Kabul

Algiers

Luanda

Buenos Aires

Yerevan

Canberra

Vienna

Baku

Nassau

Manama

Dhaka

Brussels

Thimphu

La Paz

Gaborone

Bujumbura

Minsk

Yaoundé

Ottawa

N'Djamena

Santiago

Bogotá

Moroni

Brazzaville

San José

Havana

Nicosia

Copenhagen

Quito

Cairo

San Salvador

Malabo

Tallinn

Helsinki

Paris

Libreville

Banjul

Accra

Tarawa

Athens

Guatemala

Conakry

Bissau

Georgetown

Tegucigalpa

Budapest

Jakarta

Tehran

¯ Baghdad

Dublin

Rome

Yamoussoukro

Kingston

Tokyo

Amman

Nairobi

Bishkek

Vientiane

Beirut

Maseru

Monrovia

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Vilnius

Antananarivo

Lilongwe

Male

Bamako

Valletta

Nouakchott Mexico

Ulaanbaatar

Rabat

Maputo

Kathmandu

Amsterdam

Wellington

Managua

Niamey

Abuja

Oslo

Muscat

Islamabad

Panama

Asunción

Lima

Manila

Warsaw

Lisbon

Doha

Bucharest

Moscow

Kigali

Seoul

São Tome

Riyadh

Dakar

Victoria

Freetown

Singapore

Harare

Honiara

Mogadishu

Madrid

Colombo Paramaribo

Mbabane

Stockholm

Bern

Damascus

Dushanbe

Bangkok

Lomé

Tunis

Ankara

Abu Dhabi

Kampala

London Kyiv

sinau

Ouagadougou

Montevideo

Tashkent

Hanoi

Sarajevo Podgorica

Kinshasa

Lusaka

Zagreb Ljubljana

Belmopan

Prince

Santo Domingo

Bratislava

Port Moresby

Dili

New Delhi

Pyongyang

Caracas

Pretoria

Port Louis

Chi

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Kuala Lumpur

Port-Vila

Noumea

Port-of-Spain

Cayenne

Stanley

Denis

Kuwait

Nuuk (Godthåb)

Ashgabat Washington, D.C.

Dar es Salaam

Majuro

Apia

Funafuti

Suva

Nuku'alofa

Berlin

Perth

Sydney

Auckland

Christchurch

Honolulu

Medan

Yaren District

Tbilisi

Beijing

Saipan

Melekeok Palikir

San Francisco

Port-au-

Bangui

Djibouti

Sanaa

Addis

Khartoum

Praia

Skopje

Sofia

Papeete

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Physical Map of the World, April 2007

Boundary representation is not necessarily authoritative.

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April 2007*Twenty-one of 28 Antarctic consultative nations have made no claims to Antarctic territory (although Russia and the United States have reserved the right to do so) and they do not recognize the claims of the other nations.

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Vinson Massif (highest point in Antarctica, 4897 m)

-155 m) (lowest point in Africa,

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(lowest point in Europe, -28 m)

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students out. The numbers are taken from the Ladok study documentation system. Since a large part of the exchanges are not registered in Ladok it gives a distorted picture of student mobility.

teachers out. We report the number of teachers that have used erasmus resources for an exchange or have received funds from the International Programme Office for education and Training (the so called mobility effort).

administrators out. both erasmus and the special work on international administrator mobility. In addition, the number of administrators working out-side the country at the common administration was 8, the IT faculty 4 and the university library 2.

The faculties that don’t appear in the graphics have no students or teachers registered outside the coun-try according to official statistics.

faculty of social sciences

faculty of education/lun

faculty of science faculty of fine, applied and performing arts

sahlgrenska academy

humanities facultyschool of economics

10

50

100

150

200

the number of students that left the university for schools abroad according to official statistics

and has been shown to be a great advan-tage in getting a job afterward.”

The action plan for internationalisa-tion efforts states: “The University of Gothenburg shall work to increase interest in studying for a period of time at a foreign university and improve the conditions for receiving students from other countries.” The goal in Erasmus is also to strongly increase mobility in higher education in Europe. Much has happened in recent years – more and more seek studies outside the country – but the fact remains: it’s consid-erably more attractive to do studies here.

ac c o r d i n g to u l l a n y l i n at the Inter-national Mobility Office, the number of students outside the country was 1 862 during the 2009/2010 school year. She

g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1 5

Global Week is part of this work, but we have more in the pipeline. A lot of it also has to do with removing administrative obstacles in order to make exchanges easier.”

p e r n i l l a da n i e l s s o n a l s o points out that there are probably unrecorded cases in the statistics:

“Since a central register doesn’t exist today and not all types of exchanges are reported, we don’t know how large the exchange actually is.”

A reason for student mobility having become an increasingly important ques-tion is the ranking lists. The number of students that come here and travel abroad is one parameter in the Times Higher Education and QS lists.

“A more correct reporting can give us a higher placement on the lists,” says Pernilla Danielsson.

All colleges and universities com-pete over being international to be able to be in the running for students, researchers and research funds. The action plan states that: “The University of Gothenburg wants to create a profile as being a global university that looks not only to the traditional partners in Western Europe and the US but also to a long period of research and cooperation with developing regions.”

t h e l at e st e f f o r t by the University of Gothenburg for a “global university” is an attempt to start livelier cooperation with partner universities in developing countries. The point is to increase the mobility of students, teachers, research-ers and administrators.

One project that has received a mil-lion crowns over a three-year period is the long cooperation that the Faculty of Education has had with the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in

more and more teachers discover possibilities for seek-ing money for exchanges. in terms of erasmus exchanges, the university is at the top with 71 exchanges during 2010. since some of them travelled more than once, however, it was actually 51 teachers that were granted erasmus funds, although the total number of teachers that travelled was considerably higher.

“we’re really good in terms of teacher exchanges, but we can be much better,” says pernilla Danielsson, internation-al coordinator at the univer-sity management office. she believes that there are many unregistered cases.

“the numbers for teacher mobility are actually larger, but we only see the ones that ap-ply for funding. many of them travel in the framework of their research projects, and it would be very good if we also had good central statistics about these trips. the university’s success in erasmus exchanges has to do primarily with two de-partments, geosciences and the Academy of music and Drama.”

“we have them to thank for making the university best in sweden. they’re incredibly good thanks to two enthusiasts – sandor nemethy at geo-sciences and margaret hanning at the Academy of music and Drama. the more teachers that go to different countries, the more money we have to distribute,” says Johan Ahlgren, who works with erasmus at the university.

the greatest increase is other wise among administra-tors. During 2010, 31 admin-istrators travelled via the university’s special effort for administrator mobility. Another 16 administrators travelled in “erasmus staff training”.

there’s no effort of that kind as yet for teachers.

“we in the internationalisa-tion council have tried to start work for teachers for the whole university but haven’t suc-ceeded in establishing it.”

Why aren’t there measure-

able goals for how much teacher exchanges should increase?

“A number isn’t very inter-esting,” says pernilla Daniels-son. “the most important thing is to identify the problems and try to eliminate them. how can we create courses where exchange would be suitable? it has to be easy to travel.”

professor lars Gunnarsson has worked for a long time with internationalisation at the faculty of education. he feels that what is most important is that there are extra funds that both incoming and travelling teachers can apply for.

“the one gives the other. when teachers come home and give enthusiastic reports, both students and other teachers become inspired. since many teachers are worried about working double, the best solution is for more courses to be exchangeable, so that one teacher comes here and one teacher travels to another country, and that they give instruction in each others’ courses. this may be difficult to do, however. unfortunately, our teachers who are on travel of-ten give instruction abroad and at home without pay for extra hours, which doesn’t increase interest in travelling.”

lars gunnarsson thinks that there has to be a change of attitude.

“it’s strange that working outside the country at a univer-sity isn’t counted as work time. it is in other places. it should be seen as a merit, and it’s important that you can count instruction as a merit.”

in spite of the problems, there is strong agreement that teacher exchanges are important.

“if we’re going to be an inter-national university, we have to get exchange going on all levels, students, teachers and admin-istrators. the most effective way to make student exchange popular is for teachers to travel outside the country,” says pernilla Danielsson.

allan eriksson

South Africa. What’s new is that the humanities and social science faculties are also included.

“It’s extremely good to continue to build on stable partners with whom we already have good cooperation,” says project leader Lars Gunnarsson. Almost all the money goes to financing student, teacher and administrator exchanges and to paying salaries to teachers who have moved outside the country and would otherwise have a difficult time financing travel.

Most student exchanges at this time take place in Erasmus. The University of Gothenburg sent out 260 students last year – considerably fewer than the 360 students from Lund University. The goal of the International Programme Office for Education and Training is for a total of 3 000 students to study outside the country via Erasmus. That’s quite a jump from today’s numbers.

“Our position is fairly good but we should be able to interest considerably more students in an exchange,” says Johan Ahlgren at the International Mobility Office. “An effective way to make student exchange more popular is to work on getting more places at fewer partner universities with whom we already have good cooperation. For example, geosciences signed more agreements with more than 10 places for students.”

J o h a n a h lg r e n t h i n k s that it’s a shame that there aren’t measureable goals.

“We’ve always said that we can be better. But what does that mean? It’s far too vague. What we lack is concrete plans and the strength to act.”

According to Johan Ahlgren, one problem is that there isn’t a main entrance on the web where students can go in and see what exchanges there are. The information is largely decentralised at this time. Even though a new system, Move-On, is being launched, it will take time before it can be used throughout the University.

Thomas Larsson, a law student, thinks that a good goal would be to have equally as many foreign students as incoming students.

“If we come up towards 10 percent, that would be really good. What we have to do is get rid of all the adminis-trative obstacles and get information out about what possibilities there are. Many students are worried now about not having their credits counted and risking having to repay their study debts. That doesn’t work.”

allan eriksson

best in class the university of gothenburg is best in sweden in teacher exchanges in erasmus, with 71 teacher exchanges during 2010. there were also 113 teachers who took the chance to travel for at least one month during the year.

Pernilla Danielsson is an international coordinator.

6 g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1

news

It’s time to give your opinion!ManageMent’S ProP oSal out for coMMent

the controversial question of faculty divisions has been put on ice. now work and delegation order is being given priority. in one year a completely new organisation will be in place – if the proposal is accepted.

t h e u n i V e r s i t y m a n ag e m e n t has now reworked the proposal presented by Göran Bexell and Christina Rogestam on December 15 and made it concrete. The proposal has been sent to about 70 authori-ties and responses have to be in by March 1.

Vice-chancellor Pam Fredman has also held a number of breakfast meetings at which employees have been given the opportunity to ask questions.

“We’ve gotten a number of valuable viewpoints, some of which we hadn’t thought about before and that we’ll take consideration to as we continue our work,” says Pam Fredman.

t h e b oa r d w i l l m a k e a decision on over-all guidelines for the new organisation on April 7. A more detailed decision will be taken in October.

One of the most important ambitions of the re-organisation is to create a more unified university. This has to do with increasing cooperation and thereby creat-ing better quality.

“It’s important that we are one univer-sity, internally and externally. But that isn’t the same thing as standardisation. For example, we don’t want to change the

that are spelled out at recruitment. Persons that are recruited or who apply have to be interested in the tasks and their legitimacy has to have an anchor in the organisa-tion. In the proposal, a person can have an external chairman, for example from another school. We also suggest that the mandate period be extended to six years. If the proposal is accepted, every dean and every committee has to be re-appointed.”

The proposal holds no recommendations about the size of departments – why?

“It’s hard to say precisely the exact size because of the different characters of the institutions, but they have to be large enough to manage the responsibilities and the authorities that they have according to the delegation and work order. A depart-ment that has to let personnel go just because it’s lost a half a million crowns in funds, for example, is too small.”

In what way will the new organisation support cooperation?

“It’s important that our large organisa-tion has a forum where we can discuss different questions freely. We think that there should be a research collegiate. Cooperation in the departments is created by smaller groups in which everyone who wants to can participate.”

According to the proposal, the faculties’ administration will be coordinated in a common administration. Why is that important?

“The common administration will be coordinated with the faculty offices to create better coordination and coop-eration. We have to achieve unification as an authority. But it’s important to emphasise that this doesn’t mean that individuals have to move purely physically. Administrative support at the departments must increase at the same time so that it comes closer to their activities.”

Why is the response time so short – just one and a half months?

“I think it’s long enough. In essence we’ve talked about these questions for a long time. We can’t let a new work and delegation order wait. It has to be ready by 2012 when the present interim organisa-tion ceases to exist. But even if we make a decision about the direction of where we’re going in April, we’ll continue to work with what that means in detail.”

eVa lundgren & allan eriksson

Discuss the proposal at: www.vision2020.gu.se

there aren’t grounds for changing the division of faculties at this time.

fact that the Sahlgrenska Academy and the School of Economics are different in cer-tain respects. But we do want to work for greater coordination and cooperation over various boundaries.”

The relationship between the Vice-chancellor, the deans and the prefects is also important. The administration must be coordinated so that everyone contrib-utes to the core activities of research and education so that resources are used in the best possible way.

The investigators’ proposal for a faculty division was greatly criticised. Is that why you’re waiting for a change?

“We’ve listened to the criticism and found ourselves that there aren’t grounds for chang-ing the division of faculties at this time. But we still want to look at that division, even though it won’t happen until after a decision that will be made in 2014. The reason is that we have very much to do before that, such as extensive evaluations of our research, Red 10, and our education, Blue 11.”

Are there any international models that you want to use?

“No, we don’t have any direct models. If there was a perfect organisation we’d already have had it. We have to work from our own goals and needs and learn to compete in the only way that works: with good quality.”

In what way will managers’ roles change?

“Deans and prefects will have clear roles

Illustr atIon: ander s eurén

the university of gothenburg is number three on the list of schools with the most unused research money: 1.5 billion crowns of unused funds.

financial director lars nilsson wants to see more action and less talk in 2011.

1. 5 b i l l i o n c r ow n s is half of the total grant money for research and doc-toral students.

“It’s a huge amount of money. To give a drastic example: if the University of Gothenburg didn’t get one more crown in research grants starting today we’d still be able to run things as usual for half a year,” says Lars Nilsson.

The development in Gothenburg follows the national trend. According to the National Accounting and Audit Bureau, unused research grants totalled almost 13 billion crowns at the end of 2009. That’s an increase of 74 percent since 1998. The report describes the large increase as an effectiveness problem. The Bureau’s conclusion is that: “The lack of follow-up makes the system not sufficiently transparent and it is not possible to see how much money is unused.”

t h e i n c r e a s e wa s n ’ t quite as large at the University of Gothenburg but unused funds have increased by 22 percent since 2004 and are now 1.5 billion crowns.

An important reason for this is

that the University of Gothenburg has been successful in attracting money, especially from strategic efforts such as Linné support. But the University has also gotten large research funds from the Swedish Research Council.

“There are explanations for why the money hasn’t been used at the pace that was intended. Current research policies favour areas of strength and that’s led to a concentra-tion of research funds to a small num-ber of research groups. It takes time to use money, not least for employ-ing new people,” says Lars Nilsson. According to him the problem is that there is a cautiousness on the depart-ment level in employing new people because there’s a lack of knowledge about the long-term planning.

“at t h e s a m e t i m e there are extenu-ating circumstances such as decisions on the distribution of funds that come at the end of the year and dur-ing a time when other projects are being run. The University also gets money for a research project that is accounted for as income in one year but where the expenses run for a period of several years.

Not surprisingly, Sahlgrenska Academy, which is the clearly larg-est player at the University, stands for almost half of the unused funds. The National Accounting and Audit Bureau has looked closely at the natural science and humanities facul-ties and finds that there is also a clear trend there.

“We need to strengthen the infrastructure and employ 50 to 100 researchers,” says Lars Nilsson.

Easier said than done – the ques-tion is on what level the responsibil-ity will be taken.

“The departments feel pressure that they have to keep to their budg-ets at any cost, which leads to a kind of squirrel mentality, that it’s better not to spend than to be courageous enough to make a strong effort. We’re focused too much on budgets and too little on following up. It’s possible that the department environment is too little for people to dare to take responsibility for employing new peo-ple with respect to strategic efforts.”

Lars Nilsson emphasises that there have been quite a few projects in recent years, such as RED 10, BLUE 11, an infrastructure fund of 130 mil-lion crowns and EU and guest teacher programs. But to this time these have had only a small effect on the results.

to day t h e u n i V e r s i t y has a collec-tive surplus of 700 million crowns, the greater part of which has accu-mulated in the past five years. Lars Nilsson feels that the time has come to act and not just save money wait-ing for harder times.

“All universities and colleges are in the same boat, but we have to take our golden opportunity to make long-term plans for our teachers and researchers.”

allan eriksson

“we can afford to make long-term efforts”

“We need to employ 50 to 100 researchers,” says financial director lars nilsson, who wants to see long-term efforts.

excess of 233 million crownsu according to preliminary figures, the university of Gothen-burg has been on the plus side by 233 million crowns. this is more than twice as much as planned. the greater part of the money, almost 180 million crowns, is in research. All the faculties report a clearly better economic result than they had calculated, where the sahlgrenska Academy showed the greatest plus figure, 91 million crowns. the reason is higher contributions and lower costs than planned.

More and more students charged for cheatingu a total of 15 students were suspended for cheating during 2010. most of the cases had to do with plagiarism, either of a fellow student’s work or directly from the internet. that is consid-erably more than in 2009, when nine students were charged with cheating. the most common consequence is suspension for six weeks.

An investigation by tt shows than more than 500 students were suspended last year in sweden – an increase of almost 50 percent.

trend for the university of gothenburgu the country’s universities and colleges use their resources effectively, according to the new report Do our Schools Use our Resources Effectively? by the swed-ish national Audit office. however, altogether, it can be better. the university of Gothenburg is one of the schools that the national Audit office studied closely. their conclusion is that the university of Gothenburg has a somewhat lower effectiveness than average during the period 2004–2008.

“the report doesn’t show a clear trend,” says financial direc-tor lars nilsson, “but effective-ness was clearly better in 2008 than in 2004. that’s at least a positive trend.”

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g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1 7

AnnounceMents

8 g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1

interest in ranking lists has never been greater and they’ve never been debated as they are now. so, what attitude should we have toward the lists? a new report suggests that we accept them: the lists are here to stay and it’s just as well to make the best of the situa­tion, regardless of what we think about them.

t h e s ec t i o n f o r analysis and evalu-ation has a special task – to keep an eye on ranking lists. In the lat-est analysis, Att leva med univer-sitetsrankningar (Living with univer-sity rankings), investigator Magnus Gunnarsson goes through different conceivable attitudes toward rank-ings. He distinguishes roughly three views:

d i s s o c i at i o n : None of the existing lists is of sufficient quality to function as a measure of university quality. It’s doubtful whether rankings fill any function at all. Use of the lists has a directly injurious effect because it fools university managements into focusing on the wrong activities, which has a poor impact on the qual-ity of research and education. What happens is that there is work against the lists or a refusal to report infor-mation.

ac c e p ta n c e : Even if we don’t like how the lists are used, they’re here to stay. There’s no possibility to ignore them or get rid of them; we just have to learn to live with them. One reason is that the lists get such attention. A high placement on the lists can have a strong marketing value among stu-dents, cooperative partners and the general public. The ambition should thus be to get as high up on the list as possible, but without that affecting our own work for quality.

p o s i t i V e r ec o g n i t i o n : The lists can actually be used as a measure of quality. A poor result on the lists is a sign that a university has problems. The weaknesses that the ranking lists have can be ameliorated by having a

news

gu in english

Magnus gunnarsson is behind the new report ”living with university rankings”.

t h e u n i V e r s i t y ’s p i c t u r e bank now has

4 400 picturesSee: www.gu.se/bild

close dialogue with the people who create them.

“Different approaches have dif-ferent consequences,” says Magnus Gunnarsson, “and it would be good if the University decided on a strategy so that we respond in a unified way to questions about rankings. It isn’t easy to choose a strategy, but personally I think that the accepting approach is the most reasonable one.”

t h e u n i V e r s i t y of Gothenburg declined to report information to the QS list last year and still came in 183rd place.

“The QS list has gotten a lot more attention that we thought it would, so we’ve decided to report in the future. But there’s no reason to make a big effort to get a higher placement if we’re already on the 200 list. On the Times Higher Education list it would be good from a marketing point of view if we improved our placement a little; it could motivate small, cos-metic changes.”

Even though there are complaints about poor placements, Magnus Gunnarsson points out that Sweden in a total sense is high on all rank-ing lists. Taking into consideration Sweden’s population, it comes in fourth place in the world, after Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark.

“We’re in a good place. On aver-age, there are five Swedish schools among the 200 highest ranked uni-versities on the three big lists. When you meet representatives from other

countries you’re sometimes asked, ‘What are you complaining about?’” Only a fraction of the world’s univer-sities and colleges are on the big lists (the Webometrics list has over 20 000 institutions of higher learning).

Do you think that the existing rankings will get better?

“On a micro level they can of course get better but the basic prob-lem remains, that it isn’t possible to measure all universities using the same measuring stick. I think that it only has a marginal effect, the lists won’t get better as long as they have large, fundamental methodological weaknesses and aren’t transparent.”

How does the future look?“There will be more and more

lists. I think that interest will get even bigger. A market is growing that sells detailed analyses. I think we’re mov-ing toward more specialised lists, the same way as in the US, where there are a number of lists that measure things like ‘the most popular educa-tion’ or which school gets you ‘the highest salary after graduation’.”

What can the University of Gothenburg do to improve its placement on the lists?

“We can shut down the humani-ties, social science and education faculties and put all the money into medicine and natural sciences instead. I’m sure that would help us climb up in the rankings. But I don’t think that we’d be a better university

for that. Less drastic measures might be to recruit often cited researchers, encourage researchers to publish more in Nature and Science and to write articles with foreign research-ers to a greater extent. But that isn’t either something that I recommend. I think that all eventual adaptations to ranking lists should be limited to smaller, cosmetic changes that don’t disturb our own work on quality. For example, we can put effort into marketing to attract students and top researchers. A popular and well known university automatically gets a high placement. But what we do at the present might be quite enough.”

Despite that today’s lists have con-siderable weaknesses there are still positive signs. According to Magnus Gunnarsson, the German Zeit list that ranks individual subjects is best. Another that will come this year is EU’s U-Multirank, which is a large collective European initiative.

“If it’s as good as they promise, it can be really good. But I’m scep-tical. It’s an enormous amount of material and numbers that have to be collected and weighed together, from countries with very different university systems. The risk is that in the end it will be a compromise and then we’re back in the same position as with other lists. Another devel-opment that can help the Swedish schools to get a good placement is that many universities in the US and Europe will probably have less money as a result of the financial crisis. Expensive research is rewarded in the ranking lists. A strong crown or fewer research resources in foreign univer-sities can lift Swedish schools on the THE and QS lists.”

allan eriksson

Doubtful that the lists will get better

read more about rankings in Gu Journal no. 6-2010, www.gu-journalen.gu.se/arkiv/2010/nummer-6-10/.

The university of Gothenburg’s placement in the three big lists 2010:Jiao Tong university (the “Shanghai list”): 211Times higher education: 281QS World university rankings: 183

Research at the Universit y of Gothenburg

Posttidning BSender:University of GothenburgBox 100SE-405 30 Göteborg

Nobel Prize winner is still curious

The climate – the issue of the century

Titanium screws give many people a better life

Reg.nr: 3750MReg.nr: S-000256

We are changing the climateThe issues of sustainable development and reduced climate impact are central to the University of Gothenburg. We offer more than 350 courses and 33 programmes related to sustainable development and the environment – spanning from Behavioural Science and Sustainable Business Studies to Envi-ronmental Education and Oceanography.

We have more than 250 researchers active in the areas of sus-tainable development and climate studies. Our network with Chalmers University of Technology includes 450 environmental researchers studying for example carbon dioxide reduction, deforestation, car use and environmental economics.

We are continuously trying to make our operations more en-vironmentally friendly. The University of Gothenburg is the only university in the world that is environmentally certified according to both EMAS and ISO 14001. We are also part of the International Sustainable Campus Network.If you would like to cooperate with us or know more about what we do to tackle the climate issue, please visit us at www.gu.se

Ida Hellmark and Martin Persson work with climate-related matters at the University of Gothenburg. Ida Hellmark coordinates the research network Focali, which focuses on forest/bio-ener-gy, climate change and poverty issues. Martin Persson con-ducts research on reduced tropical deforestation.

GU magazinet h e g u m ag a z i n e covers research at the university of

Gothenburg.“instead of a general brochure in

english we’ve chosen to publish a magazine with, hopefully, interesting and worthwhile articles. our intention is for the magazine to continue past this summer. take it with you when

you travel outside the country or when you have english-speaking guests,” says editor Carina elmäng.

you can order the Gu maga-zine in the same way as other information materials at:www.gu.se/omuniversitetet/bestall trycksaker

g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1 9

profile TexT: eva lundgren | PhOTO: Johan wingborg

One of the things that Andrea Castro learned during the years she did aikido was to follow the opponent’s strength instead of fighting it.

“It was hard, really hard, but at the same time I also learned something else: that confrontation is seldom the solution and that softness can lead farther.”

e n c h A n t e d by the magic of books

1 0 g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1

i t h o u r c u p s of steaming hot spicy tea we look for an empty table at Café con leche near Oscar Fredrik Church, not far from where Andrea Castro lives. She

is lecturer and subject coordinator in Spanish with origins in Buenos Aires. Her greatest interest is Latin America around the time of the last century, especially the developments in Argentina.

“For example, do you know who Eric Boman was?” she asks when we sit down on the soft couches. “He was a Swedish archaeologist that studied South America about a hundred years ago and who is still important for how Argentines see themselves. He described an Indian tribe in great detail, which was found later never to have existed. Maybe it was something he thought up. Even if he’s not always reliable he did know a great deal about Latin America, as his colleague Erland Nordenskiöld did. I hope to be able to get fund-ing together with two archeologists, one Swedish and one Argentine, for a study dealing in part with these two researchers and how the picture of Argentina developed a hundred years ago.”

t h i s i s o n ly o n e project that Andrea Castro is involved in. She’s also one of the editors of a lan-guage history of Spanish literature to come out in the fall, intended primarily for students in compul-sory school and upwards.

“Many of my students are uncertain when we discuss literature; they think that it has to do with figuring out the only right way to explain a text. But what’s interesting is that ambiguousness, that a text can’t be closed in a little box. Different people see things differently because of their experience, at the same time that the text also has to be under-stood in its historical setting. What reality does the text discuss, what aspects of the environment does it question? There’s an important double charac-ter here: learning to see at the same time that you have to be aware of the things you yourself take for granted. To show this I’ve made a comparison of different translations from the 1800s with new translations of Edgar Allan Poe’s novel The Oval Portrait. The interpretations are very different, which depends of course on the translators having lived in different times and societies.”

Andrea Castro loves literature. Even though she has to put a scientific perspective on it, she feels that there has to be a love of the texts.

“I like fantastic literature most, like the Argentine authors Borges and Cortázar. I think that social realism, like detective stories, is boring. I want to wonder and be surprised. But I do in fact

read all kinds of literature and I have since I was lit-tle when my father gave me all sorts of books, from Five Go Adventuring Again to Shakespeare.”

w h e n i a s k Andrea Castro to tell me about her childhood in Buenos Aires there are two things she mentions particularly, one of them the mornings in the British school where the children weren’t allowed to speak Spanish.

“We did anyway, of course, but when the teach-ers found out we had to write ‘I should speak English’ five hundred times on the blackboard.”

The other thing she describes is the literary workshop she was part of during her high school years where they read and discussed intensely.

“For me, whose environment was mostly family and school, this was like opening a door to a whole new world. I got to meet all different kinds of peo-ple from all over Buenos Aires. And sometimes we did things that felt frighteningly dangerous, like listening to the musical Evita, which was forbidden at that time.”

But when Andrea Castro explained that she wanted to study literature her parents thought that she should become something more sensible instead, a teacher for example.

“I was only 23 years old when I met a Swedish musician in 1988 who got me to come with him to Gothenburg. My parents were probably pretty miserable about it – they were worried about losing me. But I didn’t understand that then, I just wanted to go. After a time I started to study Swedish, Spanish and comparative literature here and with-out having made so many active choices I became assistant lecturer. I’ve visited Argentina several times during the years, with my family or alone, and both my mother and my sisters have been here. But it wasn’t until a few years ago that my father came to visit and only then did I feel like he had finally accepted that this is where I live.”

a n d r e a c a st r o says that a person’s native lan-guage exists in his or her whole body. It takes a long time to learn to joke or make small talk in a natural way in a foreign language. That’s why it’s important to her to speak Spanish with her children so that they learn the language in a natural way.

“Luisa explained the other day that she’s a hun-dred percent Swedish and fifty percent Argentine, and I think that sounds good. Spanish is fortu-nately an important language with a high status in Sweden that the children are proud of being able to speak. But for a lot of other people with a foreign background it can probably be more difficult keep up the native language.”

The University of Gothenburg also thinks that language and internationalisation are valuable, where 2011 has been appointed as a special lan-guage year.

“Still I can get irritated when the teachers at my department have to answer questionnaires, in the name of internationalism, about how good they are at teaching English. It’s extremely important for us to become more international but there are many significant languages, such as German, French and Arabic. And it isn’t true that you can manage every-where with English, not in Latin America, not even in Europe.”

t h e s pa n i s h l a n g uag e has long drawn fairly stable, high interest. It’s one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world and many people in Sweden have their origins in a Spanish speaking country.

“But Spanish is also ‘in’ among many young peo-ple, partly because a lot of popular culture comes from Latin America, although in a filtered form via the US. The University of Gothenburg offers a num-ber of preparatory courses in different languages but the introduction in Spanish is gone. It isn’t con-sidered to be a part of a university, but I don’t really understand why. What decides whether a course is preparatory – isn’t an orientation in philosophy also preparatory?”

To have the energy to manage all her projects, instruction and administration, Andrea Castro tries to find the time to exercise. She also started to run a few years ago.

“First I was exhausted after only a few kilome-

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occupation: lecturer and subject coordinator in spanish

family: Husband nils and daughters luisa and alma.

background: Born in Buenos aires, moved to Gothenburg in 1988.

lives: In Masthugget.

what you didn’t know: andrea is good at knitting.

interests: literature, film, yoga, running.

strengths: enthusiasm and curiosity.

weaknesses: Impatient, maybe a little too enthusiastic sometimes?

afraid of: a lack of love between people, people who are cocksure of themselves.

favorite food: Grilled meat with a good salad.

most recently read books: Karl ove Knausgård’s Min kamp (My struggle – which andrea liked) and Vario Vargas llosa’s El sueño del celta (that andrea didn’t like).

her tips on authors: Cristina Peri rossi, Juan José saer, Horacio Castel-lanos Moya, luisa Valenzuela.

film tips: Kvinnor utan män (Women without Men), Hämnden (revenge), Beutiful. and at the Film Festival: 108 Cuchillo de Palo.

andrea castro

a s o f t e r s o c i e t y i s what Andrea Castro would like to work for, which isn’t the same thing as accepting weakness or a let-go mentality according to Andrea.

“You see it sometimes at seminars when some-one takes criticism personally. The whole atmos-phere changes and you can’t hold a good conversa-tion. You have to manage the difficult balancing act of both being able to criticise – because you have to be aware of the weaknesses to be able to do some-thing about them – and at the same time being open to the other person’s views.”

A softer climate also means that it isn’t necessary to have a bad conscience over everything you don’t have time for.

“I’ve stopped feeling like I don’t do enough because I give priority to my children. When I get old and start to think about my life it probably won’t make me sad that I missed a few hours at work. What I would regret is if I hadn’t been there for the children. The simple fact is that you can’t work around the clock, and if there isn’t enough time there’s something wrong with work, not me.”

tres. But last year I ran Göteborgsvarvet and the first thing I did when I crossed the finish line was to sign up for next year’s race. But before I had chil-dren my thing was aikido.”

There was a note on the Department’s bulletin board that got Andrea Castro to start doing the Japanese combat sport, plus the fact that it was easy to pop into the gym because she went by it on her way home.

“ i t r a i n e d a i k i d o four times a week for five years. It was a way to challenge myself and also a way to come in contact with my aggressive side. In Argentina children are told that they should be quiet, it’s adults who talk, and I’d learned to hold back a lot of anger. When I trained aikido I got to use my aggression in a positive way. And it’s prob-ably made me better at having conversations too.”

I understand how aikido relates to the art of conversation when Andrea Castro describes the sig-nificance of softness.

“Discussions can easily become a taking of posi-tions, not least in the world of academics, where both parties think that the important thing is to win. But regardless of how intelligent the people are, that kind of behaviour doesn’t lead anywhere. Real conversations are a difficult art built on mutual respect and a desire to truly arrive at some-thing important. It has to do with having trust in that the other person has something worthwhile to say. Common sense isn’t everything, not even in the most intellectual discussions. Sensitivity and awareness are also important.”

real conversations are a difficult art built on mutual respect and a desire to truly arrive at something important.

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What risks and diseases can be found with gene tests?

“A classic array of diseases, both heredi-tary and non-hereditary. Damage to chro-mosomes isn’t hereditary. The the most common is the one that causes Down’s syndrome.”

And the hereditary ones?“Well, we have classical genetic dis-

eases that are dependent on one single gene. There are many, but they’re rare. Many of them start in the foetus or shortly after birth and break down the person’s ability to survive. They often cause great suffering. Some of them can be cured or prevented, such as PKU (phenylketon-uria). All newborns are tested for it, and if the child has the PKU gene we can rapidly adjust the diet so that the child doesn’t get the disease. Another serious disease, and uncurable as yet, that breaks out later in life is Huntington’s disease. Then there are genetic injuries that cause an increase in vulnerability and thus an increased risk of illness later in life, such as some kinds of cancer.”

Diseases can also be discovered with foetal diagnostics. Doesn’t that bring in some ethical complications?

“Yes, but most often what’s discovered is chromosome diseases. It’s been hard to discover other genetic diseases unless the parents know that there’s a certain disease in the family. But new techniques are com-ing where parents can be scanned and the foetus can be tested if something is found.”

Aren’t there ethical problems if parents see that their unborn child has a disease and decide to abort?

“Looking at actual foetal diagnostics you can see that it’s a kind of family plan-

Most people would probably get an unpleasant feeling giving a definitive answer to what a perfect child is.

tAlkIng wIth reseArcher chrIstIAn Munthe

Gene technology is developing at a galloping pace. But we have to take more responsibility for guidance and pedagogics to be able to orient ourselves in the broad number of gene tests that will come in the future.

“It’s important that health care takes its time, that the patient is given time to digest results,” says Christian Munthe, professor of practical philosophy and an expert in ethics and gene testing.

ning tool. Parents have ideas about what kind of children they want. It’s a way to choose children to the extent that you’re interested in doing that. But there’s a risk of miscarriage when amniotic fluid tests are done. New techniques, such as the CUB test, make it possible to make a more pre-cise judgement of risk before people take the step toward taking that risk.”

Is there a risk that we want to give birth to the perfect child?

“Yes, but it probably isn’t created by technology but by a wish to have perfect children. But perfect children won’t ever be able to be created with this technol-ogy. And most people would probably get an unpleasant feeling giving a definitive answer to what a perfect child is.”

Let’s say that it’s possible to find out that we carry a gene with a risk for a certain kind of cancer. Making certain choices in life, we could try to minimise the risk for getting that disease. But isn’t there a risk that we get stressed and that our quality of life deteriorates if we know too much?

“Yes, and this is also relevant for the question about foetal diagnostics. There’s a risk that health care causes worry. Experts in genetics have thought about this. There has been an idea since the 1970s about so called genetic guidance – in other words, the art of helping people to deal with this kind of difficulty.”

How should we deal with gene tech-niques?

“It’s important for health care to take its time and for patients to get a clear picture of what they’re doing before they take a next step. They have to have time to digest results. This requires time and expert com-

petence – and resources. I’m working now with transferring this kind of thinking to other areas in a project at GPCC (Centre for Person-centered Care at the University of Gothenburg). It has to do with organis-ing care on the basis of seeing people as being basically capable of making deci-sions themselves. But we have to have resources so that people get the support they need. I’m involved in a project about diabetes in children. We’ve found that most of the problems that diabetes patients have are caused by the difficulties of living with diabetes, the choices we make.”

“What we achieve when we give infor-mation about genetic risks has to do with the nature of an individual and how the information about risks is communicated. Most people think about risks in a differ-ent way than the concept that science has about risks. It’s easy for there to be mis-understandings. Feelings also come into play and there can be incorrect ideas about what can be done about the risk.”

Are you critical about anything in today’s management of gene tests?

“All parents-to-be are offered a CUB test regardless of whether they are interested, and I don’t understand that. I’m against it – it’s a waste of health care’s resources. The purpose seems to be to find as many foetuses with Down’s syndrome as pos-sible, even if the parents aren’t interested. The risk is that health care instead creates an interest in it – and that kind of goal is doubtful in terms of ethics because it gives the message that people with Down’s syn-drome are worth less than other people. We should be more restrictive and offer CUB primarily to those who actively ask for foetal diagnostics. The usefulness of CUB is that it gives better grounds for decisions about taking the risk of an amniotic test.”

gene technIques put ethics to the test

TexT: magnus pettersson | PhOTO: Johan wingborg

christian Munthe is particularly critical of dating companies that match singles on the basis of genetic analysis of the immune system. He calls it fraud.

christian munthe occupation: Professor of practical philosophy at the department of Philosophy, linguistics and theory of science

age: 48

Born: in dalarö

lives: in Gothenburg (Masthugget)

family: daughter 10 years old

Interests: Plays free improvised and experi-mental music

You can pay for a gene analysis in the US. Switzerland has dating companies that match singles on the basis of genet-ic analyses of the immune system. Do you think that the same thing is about to happen in Sweden?

“Yes, it’s already here because it’s avail-able on Internet. I think that Swedes use it too. There isn’t anything wrong with gene technology but I think that this is a kind of anxious way to organise it. It’s possible to cause people an enormous amount of inju-ry. It would be like having fast food chains but for surgery.”

What would be the problem with that?“Most of what goes on in this area is

fraud. There isn’t any genetic information about how people fit together. You might as well read horoscopes. It shows how important it is for society to understand this new technique. We’ve seen in the US that a moral standpoint has resulted in

not wanting to use federal funds for new gene techniques, and this makes it a vir-tual Christmas Eve for private companies. Another reason is that the US has allowed patents for genes. But the commercial drive has clearly shown that they’re not interested in serious health care.”

What do you think will have happened in the area in Sweden in ten years or so?

“New methods in foetal diagnostics, where you get a reliable answer from a normal blood sample from the pregnant woman. If we can take that step we’ll have foetal diagnostics 2.0 without a risk for miscarriage. But that will make genetic guidance more important. Sweden has no regular education in genetic guidance, and it’s truly needed: if we like opportunities for genetic testing, we should love guidance. However, we have to respect that some people won’t want to do the tests.”

AnnounceMents

year of languagesu 2011 is the year of languages at the university of Gothenburg. this means a number of differ-ent activities, such as a seminar series with national and interna-tional lecturers.

“the seminars will be spread over the whole university and one of the people we’ve invited is tomas von brömssen, to talk about how to talk in front of the public,” explains pernilla Daniels-son, international coordinator. “lars-Gunnar Andersson will hold a lecture, and invitations have gone out to other interesting lecturers. we’ll also give short competence development cours-es, such as a two-day course in english for administrators in may. we’re participating in a project with Århus university about the multicultural and multilingual classroom, and we’ll connect this with a workshop during the year. we have students who speak english but who have another na-tive language, and that can lead to problems that aren’t always given attention.”

on september 26, which is the european Day of language, a large number of students of education will be involved in dif-ferent activities.

“Global week, november 21-27, will also deal with the year of languages,” says pernilla Danielsson.

the Department of language and literature is particularly involved, of course.

“it’s possible to study a total of 21 different languages at the university of Gothenburg, which is pretty fantastic,” says vice Dean mona Arfs. “we’ll draw attention to this in a poster exhi-bition that will move around to different places in the university. we’re also working on develop-ing a new educational program in language that will address the relationship between language and culture, among other things.”

only e-salary statements!u there will be no more paper salary statements for the univer-sity’s employees. in the future salary specifications will only exist in individual reports. the reason is to spare the environ-ment and save money. salary statements on paper will still be sent to employees who receive temporary salaries or who are on leave of absence or sick leave, however.

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news

the university recruits students in Indiawhy the university of gothenburg? that’s a question that kerstin Jöns­son was frequently asked during her exhibition tour in india.

“the students knew exactly what they were interested in and many had also prepared themselves by visiting the university’s web site or our facebook group.”

late last fall, Kerstin Jönsson from student Affairs, together with urban nulden at the Department of Applied in-formation technology and student Åsa X, participated in the Qs world Grad school tour, where schools from the entire world present their master and post graduate programs. the swedish institute and representatives of a further six schools also participated. it’s become important for swedish universities to market them-selves abroad because of the tuition fees that students outside the ees area will have to pay starting in the fall.

the group visited six cities during the tour: Delhi, pune, mumbai, hyderabad, bangalore and Chennai.

“we started to prepare ourselves for the tour last spring to be able to present as good information as possible,” Kerstin Jönsson tells us. “in the fall we also sent out personal e-mails to everyone who had indicated that they were interested and started a facebook group, study at the university of Gothenburg, that has things like contact information for some of our international student ambassadors. the exhibitions were held at different hotels and we also had two special receptions.”

the students were primarily inter-ested in master programs at graduate schools and programs in economics, the natural sciences, information technology and some in the social sciences.

“many of them asked questions about stem cell research and pharmacol-ogy, and there was also great interest in odontology, but unfortunately we don’t have any education programs in english there. there was in fact almost no one who asked what it costs to study here. tuition fees are so natural in other countries that they probably don’t think about it.”

the facebook group and web site will now be evaluated and student Affairs will then put together a strategy for future activities.

“it’s of course valuable that good for-eign students come to Gothenburg,” says Kerstin Jönsson, “but it’s just as important that we give them help when they come and develop an alumnus activity. i’m sure it will take a few years, but it will give many valuable contacts in return.”

eVa lundgren

12 000 people sent applications last year. this year the number is down to about 4 000 and half of those haven’t paid the appli­cation fee.

it may be an illusion that the number of serious applicants has dropped so dramatically, accord­ing to mats edvardsson, head of student affairs.

“ i n e a r l i e r y e a r s the majority of applicants haven’t had the proper qualifications,” Mats Edvardsson explains. This probably isn’t the situ-ation this time.

It was expected that the number of applicants would decrease by about two thirds because of tui-tion fees in the fall. But on the 28th of January, the last day to pay the 900 crown application fee, only 801 applicants had paid. A further lsomewhat more than 1 000 were exempted from payment. That means that the number of students whose qualifications had to be tested will be about 2 000; there is still a number of applicants who have to confirm their right not to have to pay the fee.

“There are some uncertainty fac-tors that make it impossible to say how many they will be,” says Mats Edvardsson. For example, there are students that don’t have to pay the application fee because they’re already students here, but who still have to pay the tuition fee.

i t ’s a l s o u n c e r ta i n how large the decrease actually is. There can be a number of reasons for a decrease in the number of applicants. The application fee has probably meant that the number of applicants that lack the right merits has strongly decreased. It isn’t possible to say how many yet.

Many students scared away by tuition fees

top ten list of applicants to master programs that pay tuition or are tuition-free.

The table indicates the country in which the students have earned their basic degree (preliminary numbers):

Germany 93ethiopia 92bangladesh 80Great britain 80china 73Iran 65uSa 59Turkey 56Pakistan 48India 43

top ten list of master programs (indicates applicants that pay tuition or are freed from paying tuition):

1. Global studies 2. International administration 3. master in communication 4. International business and trade 5. finance 6. Strategic human resource

management 7. computer science 8. marketing and consumption 9. Social work and human rights 10. Science in management

Welcome to the International Café!The International café takes place on the first monday of every month and is an informal meeting place for international researchers, international staff, PhD students, their families and hosts.

location: Ågrenska villan, högåsplatsen 2guest services: www.service.gf.gu.se/gast

“We’re going to analyse student groups more carefully now,” says Mats Edvardsson. Why do they apply and what other schools, nation-ally and internationally, have they applied to? And how competitive are our programs? Building up a bank of experience takes a long time, several years. One of the programs that has the most international students is software engineering and manage-ment at the IT faculty. “There con-tinues to be great pressure on apply-ing,” says Carl-Magnus Olsson, who

is a guest professor in the program.“But we’ll probably have another

student composition with more from Europe and fewer from the rest of the world. That’s a shame and it feels very wrong. All system development is going toward greater globalisa-tion. Our education programs will lose some of their international feeling – that has otherwise been a strong characteristic.”

t wo n e w s c h o l a r s h i p systems have been started to make it a little easier for non-European students to come to Gothenburg. One is administrated by the Swedish Institute and the other is an effort on the part of the government that this year gives the University of Gothenburg 1.2 million crowns. The scholarship is meant to cover half of the tuition fee.

“That’s far too little,” says Mats Edvardsson. “Since a Masters costs 200 000 to 385 000, the money isn’t enough for more than about ten students. If the chance is so small of getting a scholarship, there’s no real point in applying and then the whole thing is meaningless. We have to develop new scholarship systems, both nationally and at each school. But that will take time, of course.”

An opposite trend is that appli-cants from Great Britain and the US have increased, probably because of the increase in tuitions there.

“Even if it’s too early here to give exact numbers, it seems like we’re starting to be interesting for new groups of students,” says Mats Edvardsson. “We have good pro-grams that are free for students in the EEs area and obviously cheap for Americans too. We’re facing a com-pletely new situation that we have to learn to manage.”

eVa lundgren

g u j o u r n a l 1 | 1 1 1 5The nexT ISSue WILL be PubLISheD marS 30

Ice-breaker oden’s route to the Antarctic

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Weddell Sea

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AntarcticSouth Pole

all the participants in the oden Southern ocean expedition 2010-2011. Back row from the left: anders torstensson, Katarina gårdfeldt, anna Wåhlin, lars arneborg and niklas forsgard. front row from the left: Karin Hårding, anna granfors, Sarkka langer, Melissa chierici, agneta fransson and Katarina abrahamsson.

december 13 iceberg sighting we’ve had a calm trip since we left punta Arenas on the 8th of December. After we drove slowly and waited out a storm farther south, the captain dare to begin crossing the notorious Drake sound. the waves have been high even if the weather has been good, and decks 1 and 3 were closed off for the whole voyage.

december 16 polar feelingnow we’ve passed the southern polar circle, the surface of the ocean has gotten colder and we’re in the belling-hausen sea, just east of the Amundsen sea. there’s a steady flow of icebergs of varying sizes and shapes and we can see colonies of resting penguins while others swim away from oden. A single adelie penguin is standing on an ice floe. the polar feeling is here.

we’re going to drill up seas ice cores, take samples of snow (and take pic-tures of the crystals), air and sea water, and make different flow measurements to find out how the sea ice and the snow covering affect the exchange of carbon dioxide between the sea and the atmosphere. we also want to find out how the elevated carbon dioxide content affects Antarctic water and the organisms that live there and build limestone shells, such as pteropods.

december 24

christmas in the amundsen seayou could hardly wish for a whiter Christmas than this. even if it’s a very different Christmas eve for many of us, it will definitely be an unforgettable one. the last days have been full of

baking gingerbread cookies, putting up Christmas decorations and trimming the tree to get the feeling of Christmas on board. the kitchen staff has tried hard to make a good Christmas smor-gasbord for this evening, and we’re grateful for that. the traditional Donald Duck clips will be shown in the film room at 15:00 so that we can feel like it’s a classic swedish Christmas eve.

december 30

Quicksilver in the polar ice and seawe’ve been away for almost four weeks and have had the time to make measure ments of a number of differ-ent parts of the southern and Antarctic waters and air: first the Drake passage during the crossing from south America to the Antarctic peninsula, then the bellings hausen and Amundsen seas and we’ll be moving farther west to the ross sea. but our measurements have been going on almost all the time on board, the whole way from landskrona where oden started its voyage south in octo-ber. we measure quicksilver – the first measurements in the Antarctic – in the sea water, the ice and the snow. we’re also measuring ozone and quicksilver in the layer of air closest to the sea water.

January 9

close contact with weddell sealswe lift off over an endlessly beautiful world of ice floes and blue. large, silent ice masses float in strange positions and look like they’re light in spite of weigh-ing several thousands of tonnes. soon we see an ice floe with a round seal hole in the middle. four weddell seals are sunbathing. when we go down to land they hop a few meters to the side

and look suspiciously at us. the first one has soon been hit by a dart with an anaesthetic, shot by olle Karlsson from the national natural history museum and ten minutes later it’s apathetic and pretty easy to handle. we take blood samples and take skin samples for virology and bacteriology. we cut a little of its fur for heavy metal analyses. A biopsy for DnA and environmental poisons. measure and weigh. wow, 265 kilos! the next one weighs 400 kilos!

January 14

ozone and quick silver in the airthe voyage is coming to an end. we came to the entrance to mcmurdo

sound in ross sea yesterday. we see land again after almost six weeks. ross island is off to the left. there are two high mountains on the island: mount erebus, 3 794 meters, and mount ter-ror, 3 262 meters. everything around us – the sea, the ice, the mountains and the sky – are just different combinations and nuances of white and blue. we’ve completed our research for this time. ice-breaker oden has begun its work to break up a channel in the ice to the American research station mcmurdo. it’s been a successful expedition. we who measure production and flows of green-house gases have succeeding in study-ing the flow of these gases through snow, ice and water. the gaseous form of quicksilver has been measured in sea water and ice in the Antarctic area for the first time, which means that an empty page can be filled in.

excerpts from travel blog ice-breaker oden’s route to the Antarctic that you can read in its full version at:www.science.gu.se/antarktis