Digital app offers lifeline for overseas skills retention

A pilot project using digital wallet technology involving the City of Oslo, the national government of Norway and the University of Oslo has shown it is possible to eliminate bottlenecks in the hiring of skilled immigrants and reduce visa processing times from several months to three days.

The findings of the project were presented at a meeting on 15 January organised by the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), BI Norwegian Business School, and the University of Oslo to discuss Norway’s need to attract and retain more international students in the country as a solution to the shortage of skilled labour.

Participants at the debate included the University of Oslo’s Professor Bjørn Stensaker, NHO Deputy Managing and Political Director Anniken Hauglie, BI Rector Karen Spens, State Secretary to the minister of research and higher education Signe Bjotveit, Director of Business at the Oslo Municipality Øyvind Såtvedt, and Director-General at the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education (HK-dir) Sveinung Skule.

Overall strategy

Many of them, including Hauglie, argued that Norway lacked an overall strategy for attracting and retaining international students.

A long list of documentation on Norway’s need to attract more international experts in the future was presented, as well as suggestions on how to succeed in retaining international students upon graduation.

It was, however, repeatedly stated that the present rate of retention of international students and staff was way too low compared to the growing need for experts in the Norwegian workforce.

While many companies seek expertise from overseas, they typically encounter prolonged waiting periods for immigration processing that hinder their ability to compete for top talent and grow, the meeting heard.

Despite such arguments, Bjotveit could not promise the meeting that her ministry would be able to work on a national policy to address the issue of attracting and retaining international competence before the election on 10 September.

Nor could she promise that more grants for top international students, as have been requested by higher education institutions, would be forthcoming, according to a report by UNIFORUM.

However, she argued that Norway has much to offer, both unique natural experiences and the peculiar Norwegian culture, and acknowledged that the situation called for “a more goal orientated and strategic approach to the recruitment of international students”.

Digital Wallet project

Against this backdrop, information on the Digital Lommebok, or Digital Wallet project, was well received. Developed within the Oslo Municipality and the Viken region, where 40% of the business companies lack engineers and 24% of the companies lack IT competence, according to Såtvedt, the digital wallet app has been tested on nine international researchers and 44 international students.

The app has shortened the waiting time for work permits for newly employed international citizens in Norwegian businesses from 37 weeks to three days, Såtvedt said.

Director of the Department for Communication and External Relations at UiO, Berit Kolberg Rossiné, told University World News the goal of the project, officially known as Kompetanserspor or “Competence track”, was aimed at showing that new technology recommended by the EU can be used to streamline the process of recruiting students and staff from other countries.

“We are reusing verified information between the employer-higher education institution and public Norwegian offices like the UDI, the police, and the tax authorities with the help of Wallet technology – the same technology you use when you are paying bills with your phone in Norwegian shops,” said Rossiné.

“We have demonstrated that it is possible to reduce the time from when a person is recruited from abroad until this person is in place with a Norwegian ID and residence permit from several months to three days,” she noted.

Rossiné said there was no termination date for the project because ‘new solutions are still being implemented ... when ideas are put forward. We are early users in seeing the potential of and applying this technology”.

The project is associated with the EU-funded NOBID consortium being coordinated by the Norwegian Digitalization Agency. The 25 public and private partners of the consortium are collaborating to pilot and test the EU Digital Wallet with special focus on payments.

Fewer international students

The development of the app comes at a time when the number of international students at Norwegian higher education institutions has been dramatically reduced following the introduction in 2023 of tuition fees for students outside the European Economic Area-European Union.

According to Hauglie, Norwegian businesses were now participants in a global competition over skills.

“In Norway, six out of 10 businesses report that they are not getting the experts they need. That is equivalent to 42,000 people, and the number has never been higher,” Hauglie told the meeting on 15 January.

“The problem is not only in Norway: lack of competence is reported as the largest bottleneck for economic growth in Europe.

“If we are going to fill the Norwegian need for competence in the future, we need international students,” Hauglie said, referring to an investigation that found that 65% of international students were employed in salaried positions in Norway one year after graduation,” she said.

She noted that the introduction of tuition fees in the autumn of 2023 had made it much less attractive for international students from outside Europe to come to Norway.

Hauglie referred to figures contained in a recent report by Statistics Norway, which showed that 43% of higher education migrants who came to Norway to take a degree in the period 2013 to 2018 were still in Norway at the end of 2023.

Migrants coming for higher education from Europe outside the European Economic Area-European Union and from South and Central America were retained more often in Norway compared with migrants for higher education from other countries, it suggested.

The report showed that 65% of higher education in-migrants from third world countries who were still in Norway after graduating were in salaried positions, and 68% of these were in a full-time job – and more than half of them in academic positions.

National strategy

Stensaker, pro-rector for education at the University of Oslo and one of the organisers of the 15 January event, confirmed to University World News his belief in the need for a national approach.

“In a situation where we can see more restrictions on immigration creating severe hurdles for international students in a number of countries, there are also opportunities for countries that still see benefits from internationalisation. But then we need a coherent national strategy on internationalisation.

“The current government is, rightly, concerned about the lack of skilled workers in some sectors and in more remote parts of the country. In this situation, it is strange that the government does not see internationalisation as a key solution to these domestic challenges,” Stensaker said.

Ideological shifts

Professor Emeritus Ivar Bleiklie from the University of Bergen, an expert on higher education governance who has studied Norwegian higher education and research policies from a comparative perspective, told University World News the issue of attracting and retaining international students in Norway was currently affected by “a rather fundamental and complex shift in higher education policy on both sides of the Atlantic and other parts of the world”.

Bleiklie said that the shift was driven by ideological changes, “nourished by international developments such as a heightened level of conflict and increased economic competition affecting trade, energy, and advanced technology”.

He added: “This contributes to the perception that internationalisation is problematic and that national concerns should be prioritised when they clash with international interests.”.

Bleiklie said that the “peculiar Norwegian manifestation of these trends” was tainted by the ideological orientation of the Centre (former Agrarian) Party that has had the minister of higher education in the centre-left coalition government with the Social Democratic Labour Party since 2021.

“This has led to a national turn in higher education policy characterised by the removal of support to foreign students from outside the European Union-European Economic Area, reduced research funding, increased emphasis on Norwegian as an academic language combined with complaints about ‘too much English’ in Norwegian academia, and increased emphasis on the national need for skilled labour and professionals like nurses, teachers, and engineers,” he noted.

Bleiklie said such priorities had funnelled resources away from major research universities and towards more teaching-orientated institutions focusing on educating professionals.

“Within this paradigm – whether it be visiting researchers and professors or doctoral students – international mobility is likely to be associated with unnecessary public expenses and security risks,” he added.

Short-term approach

“Thus, a vision of higher education as a long-term investment in internationally grounded research excellence and future research-based economic growth, and innovation has given way to a vision of higher education as an instrument for short-term national investment in educational programmes that satisfy immediate and short-term needs to supply the labour market with properly educated Norwegian nationals,” he explained.

He said that given this orientation, the major reason why a deputy minister (state secretary in Norwegian) did not have any comments and proposals regarding strongly expressed needs from business, industry, trade unions, and higher education institutions was that the government “does not want to and does not intend” to put any policies in place to cater to those needs.

“The only contribution from the vice-minister to this discussion was a tepid comment to the effect that Norway’s attractiveness as a tourist destination should suffice to attract foreign students,” Bleiklie said.