This is an opinion piece in Dagens Nyheter. The author is responsible for the opinions in the article.
On the same day that DN Rebecka Katz published Thor’s text on the precarious situation of unestablished humanities scholars (9/2), I and thousands of other researchers submitted applications to the Swedish Research Council’s call for project grants for the humanities and social sciences.
As Katz Thor mentioned, 89 of the 1,131 applications received were approved last year. Assuming an estimated two weeks of full-time work for each application, the time spent – wasted – in the 1,042 applications that were not approved amounted to approximately 49 years of full-time work.
Now there is only one left a large number of calls for proposals in a complex landscape in which an ever-increasing share of research funding is acquired through competition. This applies not only to research in the humanities, but even more so to other areas of science. According to Norway’s statistics, a professor spends an average of 22 percent of their research time looking for research funding, while an associate professor spends 17 percent. The system also requires extensive administrative work for universities and donors. Qualified researchers spend tens of thousands of hours reviewing and, in most cases, rejecting applications. Translated into monetary terms, this system costs billions every year.
The system is characterized by a neoliberal market logic in which competition is expected to filter out quality
When the funding rate is so low, the process is like a lottery: the more tickets you buy (submitted applications), the greater the chances of winning (research grants). Consequently, the Formas Research Council capitulated to arbitrariness and introduced “partial randomization” in last year’s call for proposals. The applications are divided into three groups: some are rejected completely, others are awarded directly and in the large group in between the winners are determined by lottery.
Since there are more people who want to do research than have the money to do it, some kind of selection is necessary. The fact that research funding is predominantly awarded in the form of competitive project grants with low barriers to entry is a political problem. The system is characterized by a neoliberal market logic in which quality is expected from competition, but the transaction costs and measurement problems that competition inevitably entails are rarely taken into account.
Instead of career paths at universities, the model creates a precariat of researchers who work their way up project by project
Instead of career paths In universities, the model creates a precariat of researchers who work their way up project by project. Many give up, change careers and are lost to science. Just as in other sectors, precariat creates tensions. We “insiders”, with secure jobs but little time for the research that is important to us because we dedicate ourselves primarily to teaching and administration, see how the precariat of researchers increases the competition for external research funding through their numbers and the fact that they often have more time to advance and thus stay further in the queue. At the same time, these “outsiders” may view us employees as fat cats who should be content with what we have and leave the research funds to them.
From my perhaps privileged position, I think it would be better for everyone if the necessary selection were decided through meritocratic hiring processes rather than through constant competition in piles of applications. If a significantly larger proportion of research funding went directly to universities – at least 50 percent, the Swedish University and College Association suggests, but in other successful research countries it is often 60 or 70 percent – many more positions could be created that accommodate both teaching and research.
There would be more We want to offer researchers appropriate employment conditions, do more research for their money and create better conditions for research and teaching to enrich each other, which benefits both students, science and ultimately society.
