Excellence seekers, pragmatists, or sceptics : Ways of applying performance‐based research funding systems at new universities and university colleges in Sweden

The Swedish system of research funding has undergone major changes, while competitive funding schemes gradually have gained popularity, at the expense of institutional block grants. In recent years, there has been a strong drive to improve research performance in universities as a result of governmental desires, resulting in performance-based research funding systems (PRFS) being introduced to distribute block grants. The study on which this article reports sought to understand the development of increased government intent to steer resources for research, by investigating the behaviour of universities and university colleges in Sweden in terms of internal organisation and distribution of funding. The article investigates the structure of and motives for applying PRFS at seven new universities and university colleges through a document and interview study. We identified three categories of higher education institutions: the excellence seekers, the pragmatists and the sceptics. Universities rhetorically ignal compliance with governmental propositions to distribute funding according to performance measures, but their actions are limited. Thus, national incentives, models and measures influence decisions at lower institutional levels in a rather modest way.Special Issue: Expansion and retrenchment of internationalisation in higher education: Theories, methods and data</p

Disrupting Dual Monolingualisms? Language Ideological Ordering in an Internationalizing Swedish University

This chapter investigates the ways in which various discursive processes within and about Swedish Higher Education (HE) are rendering some value-laden linguistic practices and processes invisible. Previous studies in the field of Language Policy and Planning (LPP) have focused on the ‘internationalisation’ of HE with a pre-occupation for opposing linguistic systems, for example, Swedish and English. However, this study reveals how such dualistic thinking can (re)produce essentialising and highly ideologized monolingual and monocultural categories, over-simplifying what is understood by the ‘international’ and ‘national’ in contemporary HE. Drawing on data from an interview-based study carried out in a sciences department at a major Swedish university, this chapter demonstrates the potential in taking a multilingual approach when seeking to better understand the affordances and constraints of internationalisation.