The action plan for KTH for the period 2024-2026 is now published. KTH:s verksamhetsplan 2024–2026 This document includes the action plans for all schools. Our action plan focuses on three main areas: continuous support for research and infrastructure to maintain excellence, improved quality in undergraduate and doctoral education, and enhanced working and study environments for sustainable faculty renewal.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I will share the content and motivations behind our action plan in a series of three posts. In my previous post, I covered research and infrastructure. Today, I will focus on education. In the upcoming post before the summer break, I will reflect on faculty renewal and the work environment.
Beyond the strategic evaluation of the programs, which is an ongoing discussion at the central level, I believe two important questions should be central to our school’s education portfolio: What is the ideal profile of the educator we want for our students? How can we ensure that our resources effectively foster this educational environment?
Our students should have access to the best expertise in their field of study, which means that even for basic courses, the ideal teacher is an active researcher with strong pedagogical skills. To achieve this, we need to organize our resources so that all faculty members are involved in teaching responsibilities, including classroom contact with students, course development, course management, and program management, while also having the resources to actively pursue research. The balance between teaching and research time will, of course, depend heavily on the specific research area.
A relevant question is: do our financial resources allow for a volume of faculty actively involved in teaching while also having access to research time and grants? This has been our aim for many years, but our internal funding is not yet organized and distributed to fully sustain this model.
One quick fix could be to change our strategy to allow for personnel with only teaching duties alongside a “research-oriented tenure track system.” While I do not want to completely exclude this option, I believe there are other approaches we should try first. Instead of optimizing the volume and composition of the faculty to fit our current teaching and management roles, we could explore whether optimization is possible within our programs and courses. We need to create a sustainable work environment for our faculty, as many are currently overburdened with teaching assignments and educational management roles. Time for pedagogical development and education renewal, the creation of new courses and examination methodologies, should be integrated into a balanced system, rather than being treated as additional tasks.
Our school currently oversees four five-year engineering programs, which are among the top at KTH in terms of student applications and the average grades of admitted students, 11 master’s programs, and seven Ph.D. programs. Our immediate goal, as outlined in the school’s decision (Beslut om direktiv för revidering av masters- och doktorsprogrammen vid SCI), is to investigate the possibility of reducing the number of our master’s and doctoral programs, optimizing our course offerings, and, in the long term, creating processes and resources for better course cooperation with Stockholm University and other nearby universities.
Here is the text regarding education contained in the school’s VP (translated from Swedish):
The school’s reform work will focus on providing the faculty with the conditions necessary to improve the quality of programs and courses. This will be achieved by optimizing the range of master’s and doctoral programs, creating more collaborations and synergies, reshaping teaching and examination methods, and streamlining administrative processes.
The main focus of the school’s reform agenda in undergraduate and doctoral education will be:
- Sustainable staffing with capacity for development. The school will prioritize ensuring a stable workforce that has the opportunity for continuous development and improvement.
- Breadth and depth. We aim to maintain subject breadth and depth while recognizing the need to reduce the number of master’s and doctoral programs as well as advanced-level courses. This will be done without reducing revenue or compromising the quality of education.
- Financial transparency. We will work towards increased clarity and openness regarding the school’s finances. This includes harmonizing compensation models between departments within undergraduate education and introducing a regulated compensation model for doctoral education.