Lärosäten och forskningsfinansiärer

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions and Research Funders

One of the most basic conditions for Swedish universities is the funding they receive for conducting research and education. This is a dimension of the higher education system that is extremely underexplored. For the government, it is one of the most central instruments and funding is a crucial prerequisite for academic freedom. When the relations between the higher education institutions and the research funders are analyzed with correspondence analysis, four clear dimensions emerge, where the higher education institutions’ positions primarily can be understood in relation to their set of faculties. This implies firstly that there are very large differences in the conditions and resources of higher education institutions, so great that the idea of higher education institutions as a unified category seems directly misleading. But it is also possible, secondly, to question the idea of the university as a clearly cohesive unit.