The reason was a visit from Denmark, including the Faroe Islands and Greenland – about ten university directors were on a study trip in Sweden. Head of Department Magnus Wiktorsson at Campus Södertälje, and Heads of Department Cecilia Williams and Peter Savolainen at SciLifeLab, kindly acted as our guides – a big thank you to them. It was of course hard not to be proud when the visitors expressed how impressed and inspired they were.
One question that was discussed was how education is dimensioned and located. There it can be stated that the Danish university and higher education system appears to be more closely controlled by political decisions than ours. In the Swedish system, the trust in the institutions of higher learning regarding educational planning and localization is relatively large when compared – which is something we must take advantage of and live up to.
The Danish visitors wondered, among other things, about questions such as the university’s connection to the labor market, how we work with partnerships and collaboration with companies and organizations, and how we link our educations to research with proximity to strong research environments.
We reasoned overall about common challenges in terms of support services, how to remove administrative obstacles to provide support for research and education in an optimal way. This type of exchange with colleagues is particularly rewarding when doing development work.
Now there are barely three months left until the support services are brought together in a joint and coordinated organization and there are constantly suggestions as to what we can do better together. Looking forward to a continued inspired autumn.