Source:  Science, June 18, 1993 v260 n5115 p1751(2).
Title:More elitism, encouraged with a shot of hard cash: Sweden.
(includes related article on the Karolinska Institute) (Science
in Europe) (Cover Story)
Author:  Peter Aldhous
Abstract:  Research minister Per Unkel's plans to reorganize Swedish
science include: freeing universities from government control; increasing
research funds, to be handled by three new foundations; building up
specialized university research centers; and recruiting outstanding foreign
scientists.
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Subject Sweden -Science and technology policy
Science and state - Sweden
Universitiesandcolleges-Sweden
Medical colleges - Research
Locations:  Sweden
Organizations:  Karolinska Institute - Research
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Full Text:  COPYRIGHT American Association for the Advancement of Science
1993
STOCKHOLM--Per Unckel is a man with a mission. The 45-year-old career
politician, who has been Sweden's research minister since 199 1, is planning
the biggest shake-up of the nation's scientific enterprise in 40 years,
cutting Sweden's universities loose from government control and kicking them
into the competitive world of the late 20th century. His ultimate goal: A
diverse, U.S.- style system with universities specializing to create
world-class centers in the disciplines where they are strongest. And far
from protesting these changes, the usually conservative Swedish research
community seems happy to go along. The reason? Unckel has sweetened the pill
by promising the "largest increase ever" for Swedish research funding--even
as the government slashes other areas of public spending to tackle the
burgeoning national debt.

Unckel's vision is a far cry from the academic research enterprise built up
by the Social Democratic governments that have ruled Sweden for most of the
past four decades. The government currently influences everything from
faculty appointments to the kinds of research that individual universities
pursue, and its benign sponsorship has produced a system that is the envy of
much of the rest of Europe: Swedish scientists come second only to the Swiss
in terms of citations per paper, and institutions such as Stockholm's
Karolinska Institute (see box) are world renowned.
But this cozy arrangement is now coming under attack as the ruling
center-right coalition struggles to pull the country out of its worse
recession in memory. To remain internationally competitive, says Unckel,
what's needed is some elitist thinking: "Higher education and research must
be given extensive freedom, and the incentives to attain high standards." He
talks of attracting top-flight foreign researchers to Sweden. He plans to
double the number of Ph.D. candidates and has told the universities to start
payingsalaries t graduate stud. He is cajolingth uivenitiesto
"compete and challenge one another," and work more closely with industry.
And he wants Swedish researchers to compete intensely for European funds as
the nation gets ready to join the European Community (EC).
To achieve the promised budget increase, Unckel is siphoning $137 billion
from the "wage earner funds" levied from industry by the Social Democrats.
These funds were intended to buy shares in companies for the public
(Science, 12 March, p. 1536), but Unckel now plans to plow them into three
foundations that will distribute the spoils over the next 15 years. The
largest, with some $820 million, is for industrially relevant research; an
environmental science foundation, again slanted toward industrial
applications, will get some $340 million; and the humanities will pick up
the rest.

Why create new agencies, when Sweden already has an efficient research
council system? "If I'd have wanted more of the same, I'd have put money
into the old structures," says Unckel, arguing that research councils are
fine for distributing project grants but are not equipped to run the large
initiatives in areas like biotechnology and materials science that he has in
mind. And while many academics would prefer to see the money go to the
research councils, most don't want to rock the boat by
complaining--particularly as the bill to release the wage earner funds for
research is facing staunch opposition from the Social Democrats. "If it
comes through, it will be very significant increase for research," says Carl
Nordling, secretary-general of the Swedish Natural Science Research Council.
Researchers are similarly pleased with Unckel's conviction that the best way
of improving technology transfer is to boost graduate programs and send more
Ph.D.s out into industry. And his proposal to create new centers of
excellence" for research, closely linked to the universities, has also gone
dw well. The planis sorton dtail, butgovrnment's science policy
bill, published in February, mentions the campus-based units funded by the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute as a possible model.

Unckel's idea of drafting in scientists from abroad to kick the centers into
life has, perhaps surprisingly, also won general support. Far from worrying
about foreigners taking Swedish jobs, many scientists see an opportunity to
entice the best young talent into research. "It's like a concert," says
Uppsala University ion physicist Bo Sundquist. "If you have a big
international star, it's an attraction." Indeed, Unckel's entrepreneurial
spirit seems to be catching on: To woo leading foreign scientists, maybe we
should "give them a limousine, a driver, and a nice apartment," muses
Stockholm University biochemist Bertil Andersson.

Of course, there are critics. Many researchers say that Unckel's plan to
convert graduate students into salaried employees could in fact scupper his
plan to double the number of Ph.D. students by the end of the decade.
Everyone agrees that it's a good idea to pay young scientists a steady wage.
But universities will now have to pay employers' tax for their Ph.D.
students, and Unckel has not so far provided full compensation, leaving
graduate programs facing a cash shortfall of 10%, or more.
Other researchers complain that Unckel should do more to tackle the
disinterest that many Swedish companies show toward research; and some fear
that the government's current zeal for science stems from unrealistic
expectations. "[They] seem to think that you can research yourself out of a
crisis," says physical chemist Bengt Norden of Chalmers Technical University
in Gothenburg, and a member of the government's science advisory committee.
Nevertheless, Sweden's universities could be in for dramatic change over the
next few years. Unckel wants faculty committees to begin operating more like
research councils, applying tough evaluation to make sure that the best
researchers get the lion's share of the multimillion-dollar block grants
that the universities get each year for research. Faculties are also being
pushed to merge the traditional small departments--often centered on a
single professor--that hinder a multidisciplinary approach.

Most striking of all, two leading universities-Chalmers in Gothenburg, and
Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology--may step out of the state secto
and relaunch themselves as private foundations to avoid having to deal with
government red tape. Even with the greater freedom that Unckel promises,
state universities will still need parliamentary approval for new buildings,
complains mathematical physicist Olle Brander, dean of the Chalmers
technical faculty. And a private university, he says, could create badly
needed U.S. style assistant professorships--which aren't allowed under the
Swedish state system. But many of the Chalmers faculty are skeptical, and
even Brander concedes that it will be hard to raise enough money to become
geniunely independent of the government.

Any ambitions to make Chalmers into a Swedish Stanford will, in any case, be
squashed if the Social Democrats win the next election--which must take
place within a year and a half, and could well be sooner, as the present
government does not command an overall parliamentary majority. The Social
Democrats have already said that they would not allow private universities
to receive government funds. No one, however, expects the next government to
reverse the general trend toward elitism. "[T]his will be a policy for the
future," says neuroscientist Tadeusz Wieloch of Lund University. Researchers
elsewhere in Europe should get a taste of the Swedes' tough new competitive
edge any day now. Although they have all the usual reservations about the
Brussels bureaucracy, most Swedish scientists back their government's
decision to join the EC--as they know that labs lying at Europe's northern
fringes cannot rely on their location to ensure rich collaboration with
their counterparts to the south. As part of the move toward EC membership,
Sweden is about to become a full partner in the EC's research programs.
Unckel, for one, confidently expects his scientists to win back in EC grants
all of the money that Sweden is being asked to pay into the programs--and
half as much again.

A Lot More Than a Nobel Heritage
Every fall, the biomedical research community's attention turns to the
Karolinska Institute in Stockholm--as the world waits to learn who has won
the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. But suggest to professors at
this unique, free-standing medical school that their institute owes its
reputation to the tradition of staging medicine's version of the Oscars, and
you'll get an indignant response. "Our tradition is to avoid tradition,"
says neurobiologist Lars Olson. "We've been able to stay on top by doing new
things."

Olson is referring to the consistently innovative research that has won the
Karolinska its reputation as Europe's premier center in his discipline. But
institute president Bengt Samuelsson notes that the Karolinska can also
innovate in response to a changing political environment: It has pre-empted
many of the government's current ideas to reform Sweden's universities (see
main story). Next month, its archaic structure under which some 1300
researchers are divided into 150 tiny departments will be scrapped--creating
30 multidisciplinary units, chaired by department heads given real power to
decide which projects should get the most bench space. And echoing the
government's call for elitism, Samuelsson is setting up committees of senior
faculty members that will act like "mini-research councils," rewarding
groups doing the highest quality work with an extra-generous slice of the
Karolinska's $42 million a year central research budget. The aim is to free
resources that are "locked into petrified organisms," says virologist Erling
Norrby, dean of the medical faculty. Stewardship of the Nobel does have its
advantages, however. "We always have lots of scientists coming through
here," says Samuelsson--himself a laureate in 1982 for his pioneering work
on prostaglandin biochemistry. Who, after all, would pass up an opportunity
to come and talk to the people who hold sway over biomedicine's most
glittering prize? But judging the Nobel is hard work: If you are one of th
15 Karolinska professors on the Nobel committee, "you leave for your summer
vacation with a suitcase full of reprints," says committee secretary Nils
Ringertz.

Certainly, no one can accuse the Karolinska of standing still. Construction
workers are now midway through renovating the imposing 1940s red-brick lab
blocks that make up most of the main campus in the Solna region of north
Stockholm. And the last decade has witnessed an explosion of growth at the
Huddinge campus, south of the city--courtesy of the local council, which has
pumped money into the Huddinge site as part of a wider investment program
designed to prevent the city's poor southern suburbs degenerating into a
Swedish version of south central Los Angeles.

The driving force behind this development is steroid hormone receptor
biochemist Jan-Ake Gustafsson, director of three research centers at
Huddinge set up under the Karolinska umbrella, but paid for largely by the
city council. The 100-person Center for Biotechnology opened in 1985 and has
since been joined by similar initiatives in structural biochemistry and in
nutrition and toxicology. Gustafsson says the idea was for all three to
serve as "centers of excellence" in their respective fields--just like the
campus-based research centers that science minister Per Unckel now wants to
see established all over Sweden. Indeed, the Huddinge site is virtually a
blueprint for many of Unckel's policies. As the minister is now urging,
Gustafsson set out to attract top foreign scientists: An early recruit to
the biotech center was the respected Finnish molecular virologist Henrik
Garoff, brought in from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in
Heidelberg. And the gleaming building, called Novum, that houses the three
centers is a model of academic-industrial partnership: It also hosts two
regular Karolinska departments, a small spin-off drug company and a pain
control research group from the Swedish drug company Astra.

Gustafsson's entrepeneurial style isn't to the taste of all of his
colleagues, however. And the millions of dollars spent on the spacious modem
labs at Huddinge have galled some researchers forced to endure cramped
conditions at Solna--still the Karolinska's undisputed research powerhouse.
Gustafsson dismisses the rivalry between the two sites as "playful tension,"
but others see dangers from this north-south friction. With Sweden's
universities being encouraged to compete more strongly for funding, failure
to present a united front could prove costly, warns Hakan Eriksson, one of
Unckel's close advisers and a reproductive endocrinologist at the Karolinska
Hospital.

So far, at least, Eriksson's prophesy shows no sign of coming true, as the
Karolinska is slated to receive a full one-third of the government's
investment in new university buildings over the next 3 years. There is no
suggestion that standards are slipping, either: The only Swedes among the
100 most cited researchers of the 1980s--neuroscientists Tomas Hokfelt and
jan Lundbergare both at the Karolinska. But Norrby agrees that there's no
room for complacency. Aiming to be the best medical school in a small
country like Sweden is not good enough, he says: "We want to compete with
Harvard and with Yale."
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