Pressure mounts to review decision to close quota scheme

Ever since the decision in parliament in 2016 to close the Norwegian Quota Scheme providing 1,100 grants from students from the Global South and Eastern Europe, members of parliament and university staff have argued that “poor African students are no [longer] coming to Norway to have the free education their country is badly in need of”.

In the newspaper Vårt Land, Professor Auders Breidlid of the Oslo and Akershus University College (now Oslo Metropolitan University) said: “African students have been substituted by rich students from Asia.”

Now some university leaders are warning that the decision has led to a drastic reduction in the number of students from the Global South attending their institution and political parties are pushing for a change in approach.

Members of parliament from the Christian Democratic Party and the Labour Party have asked the minister of research and higher education several times in parliament about the effects of closing the Quota Scheme.

On 11 November 2018, MP Hans Fredrik Grøvan asked: “How will the minister ensure that it will still be possible for students from the poorest countries to study in Norway and how will she follow up on the programme so that the intentions of the Quota Scheme are fulfilled?”

Nina Sandberg of the Labour Party said that they were against the closing down of the Quota Scheme in favour of the new Panorama strategy and the NORPART programme (targeting institutional collaboration rather than individual grant support).

“We in the Labour Party were against the closing down because we saw the Quota Scheme as a way of providing development assistance and we think that both the Global South and the Norwegian universities are now losing out.”

Grøvan in the follow-up question said that there had been an evaluation of the effect of the closing of the Quota Scheme and that it was already possible to see that the change has contributed to a significant reduction in the number of students from the poorest countries.

“Is it not important for the minister to make a move now, so that we might quickly redress this [imbalance], which we think is a clear negative effect of the closing down?” Grøvan asked.

Minister of Research and Higher Education Iselin Nybø said the institutional collaborations between Norwegian institutions and the institutions with which they collaborate have been strengthened.

“In connection with the White Paper to parliament that we are working on [due by December 2019], we will look at different ways of implementing the NORPART collaboration to see if changes are needed. We are looking upon the strengthened institutional collaboration as a great advantage compared to the [former] focus on the individual level.”

Grøvan said he would like to underline that the Christian Democratic Party had approved of the change but with a clear understanding that as many students from the poorest countries should be included in the new programme as there had been in the Quota Scheme.

“In particular we raised the demand that we should not have a move towards fewer students coming from the Global South and more from the countries we can characterise as middle-income countries,” Grøvan said.

Later, in the fall of 2019, the Christian Democratic Party negotiated a place in the government together with the three other parties already holding power. As part of the declaration establishing the new four-party government, the Christian Democratic Party managed to include a paragraph saying that the Quota Scheme should be re-examined. This is to be included in the ongoing ministerial preparation for the White Paper to parliament before the end of 2019.

Asked by Khrono, the Oslo Metropolitan University newspaper – which is now becoming a consortium newspaper with the participation of several Norwegian universities – if the Christian Democratic Party is working for a reintroduction of the Quota Scheme, Grøvan confirmed that they were.

Dramatic impact

On 11 March 2019, two vice rectors of the University of Bergen, Annelin Eriksen and Oddrun Samdal, wrote in the university magazine På Høyden: “The effect of closing down the Quota Scheme and substituting it with NORPART is dramatic. At the Centre for International Health the number of students is dramatically reduced. Around 90% of the students came from these countries [the Global South] in the last two years before the closing down of the Quota Scheme. Afterwards, only one or two students are from the South in the new batch of students.”

In total, the University of Bergen has three NORPART projects in this period and three in the next. In this period there are between 10 and 17 students coming for at least three months, which is significantly fewer than through the Quota Scheme, where there were around 100 per year, according to Eriksen and Samdal.

The stays are short and give little opportunity to establish good academic relations with staff at the University of Bergen since the students are not a part of the existing student group. Much energy is spent on practicalities for the students since they are coming at different times and housing is also often a problem.

“The Quota Scheme opened up for PhD degrees [at the University of Bergen] and hence strengthened the development of further competence building in the Global South, which the Quota Scheme has many examples of,” Eriksen and Samdal wrote.

Positive effects on research

Professor Rune Nilsen, chairman of the University of South-Eastern Norway and former deputy rector of the University of Bergen, told University World News the Quota Scheme had some important aspects. These included that students took up ordinary study places at Norwegian institutions.

Universities treated these students as ordinary students, using an equal amount of resources as ordinary students – also at the PhD level. But, unfortunately, some higher education institutions did not comply with this.

He said in particular PhD students joined good research groups and this had a positive effect on Norwegian research. At the same time the institutions often strengthened their partnerships with the home institutions of the students. These links continued when the graduated students went back to their home institutions.

“This was an arrangement that secured good students for good research groups in Norway. In the new system this factor was significantly weakened since the compulsory programme collaboration excludes many academic fields,” Nilsen said.

“A revisit and re-establishment of the Quota Scheme could save this unique quality-based training programme, which was not a development aid programme, but a high-quality programme at the core of Norwegian universities’ activities, and with strong development collaboration effects resulting from this,” Nilsen said.

Professor Ole Petter Ottersen, former rector of Norway’s University of Oslo (2009-17) and now rector of Karolinska Institute in Sweden, told University World News: “It is a paradox that we, at a time when we have to collaborate with universities in the South to reach the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in Agenda 2030, are making changes that are reducing the number of students from the Global South.”

Randi Haaland, professor emeritus of archaeology at the University of Bergen, recently conducted a survey of 27 doctoral and masters degree candidates who graduated with her as a supervisor in the Quota Scheme programme. Many of them now hold high-level positions in museums, universities and cultural heritage institutions in Africa.

“I often receive invitations to attend conferences in countries abroad from former students in deep appreciation of the competence gained, which has changed their lives,” Haaland told University World News.