From The Chronicles of Higher Education, January 1992
Overcrowding at the University of Oslo is so severe that officials may "suspend"' all final examinations this year because there are not enough rooms in which to administer them.
The conditions at Oslo are symptomatic of the situation throughout Norway's higher-education system, which over the past four years has experienced close to a 50-percent increase in full-time enrollment- from 95.000 in 1988 to more than 140,000 today. Each of the country's four main public universities--Bergen, Oslo, Tromso, and Trondheim--report it has too many students and not enough space. The universities' efforts to cope have led to a broad-based consensus among political leaders in Europe's northernmost country that swift and substantial increases in support for higher education are essential.
A Record Increase in Funds
Last month, following the recommendation of the minority Social Democrat government, the Storting-~-Norway's parliament agreed to a record 11-per-cent increase in funds for higher education and research, to about $1.42-billion, for the coming year.
At the same time, government officials are continuing their campaign to try to reduce drastically the number of small, regional colleges scattered across the country.
Originally designed as an alternative to the university system, the network of 104 regional colleges offers programs of study that lead to the equivalent here of a bachelor's degree.
About 55,000 of Norway's students are enrolled in the regional colleges, and about 10,000 attend private colleges and institutes. The rest-some 75.000-are enrolled at the four universities.
Current government plans, which the Storting has reluctantly endorsed, call for rolling back the number of regional Colleges which remain highly popular—to roughly 30 so that more resources can be focused on the universities.
"The system is under unprecedented pressure, says Jan Toska, executive officer in the university section at Norway’s Ministry of Education, Research, and Church Affairs. Mr. Toska, one of those responsible for preparing the new higher-education budget and pushing it through the parliament, says that about $ 20 million will go for the construction of new facilities at the teeming universities, particularly those at Bergen and Oslo.
Student leaders across the country say the amount to be spent on new facilities is not nearly enough.
"Ever since 1945 the government has been urging everyone to get a higher education, but then when it comes time to pay the bill, there isn't enough money, says Anne Lagoen, the head of the Oslo students' union. "We're fed up.”
No Provision for Library
Ms. Lagoen is particularly distressed that the new budget contains no provision for what she considers the most pressing need of the flagship Oslo campus: a new, conveniently located library. Overcrowding and no place to grow forced the university to relocate its campus from the city center to the outskirts of the capital, with only the law school and the main library remaining downtown. Hence students must shuttle between the library on the old campus and classes on the new campus, in a district called Blinder. Oslo students say the situation is not acceptable.
Mr. Toska of the education ministry promises that the university will get a new library, probably within the next two years. "We are working on it now," he says. He also cautions that planning has to precede expansion. "We can't just throw money at higher education--we have to get our signals clear first," he says.
Student leaders say money alone won’t correct the underlying problem, which they identify as the government’s ”skewed and confused” notions about support for higher education.
"University students in Norway are treated like second-class citizens,” says Signe Knappskog, vice-president of Norsk Student union, which represents the country's university students. “Society doesn't sufficiently value what we do. If it did, it wouldn't be shoving us into grossly overcrowded schools.”
Says Briten Stene, head of the students’ union at Bergen: “It's really a very depressing situation."
Ms. Stene says that classes on the Bergen campus--which was built for 6,000 students but currently enrolls 15,000-are so crowded that sunde fire marshals have suspended sessions in mid-lecture on several occasions because attendance exceeded the rooms' legal capacity.
An Embarrassment
Ms. Stene and other student leaders as well as many frustrated academics and administrators - see the overcrowding as clear proof of the government's inability to manage and meet the needs of its higher-education system.
At the very least, the overcrowding is an embarrassment to the government. In its 1990 report, "Education in Norway," the education ministry confidently declared: "The current objective of government policy is a capacity of 105,000 full-time students by the mid-90s." That projection was undone when 45,000 new students streamed into the system over the past three semesters.
"The strong and unexpected growth in the number of university applicants has made it clear that the knowledge base for steering higher education is too weak stated a recent white paper prepared for the government by the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities, a quasi-public group.
Per Olaf Aamodt, a researcher at the council, is trying to figure out where all the new students came from. According to Mr. Aamodt, the student-population explosion is probably the result of two forces: increased unemployment among young people and the government's own promotion of higher education as something that is good for all Norwegians.
Bitter and Discontented
Mr. Aamodt says the current unemployment rate - 5 percent, very high by Norwegian standards—has probably encouraged more 19-year-olds to go directly into the higher-education system instead of taking time out to pursue other interests, as had been the norm.
As for the government's push for higher education for all, "Education in Norway” stated it this way: "It is the view of the government that higher education should be regarded as contributing to the economic, social, and political life of all regions in Norway.”
Faced with such rhetoric, students can't be blamed for being bitter and discontented, says Mr. Aamodt. He sees as "'especially cynical” the government's implicit encouragement of higher education as a way to help solve Norway’s unemployment problem by continuing to offer high-interest, student-loan packages to all qualified seekers. "In a sense, the students are being asked to pay for the cost of their unemployment by mortgaging their futures," says Mr. Aamodt. "It's a cheap trick.”
"We are in danger of losing a generation," he adds.
Norwegian student leaders see the financial-aid situation as further proof of their oppressed and neglected status. “We find it unacceptable that students are forced to carry such a large burden of debt,” says Bjorn Tore Sund, vice-president for financial issues of the national students union.
Like many student leaders in neighboring Sweden, Mr. Sund supports the idea of paying students a salary to pursue a degree. "That would truly underline the value our society places on our work,” he says. Mr. Sund did not say how he expected Europe’s most sparsely populated nation, which is only now starting to climb out of a deep recession, to pay for such a program.
Mr. Sund and his fellow officer, Ms. Knappskog, are particularly anxious to have the government do something about the growing number of students who are parents. According to unofficial estimates here, one of every five students in the higher-education system is supporting at least one child.
Tempered Sympathy
The student grievances get tempered sympathy from Per Nyborg, the general secretary of Norway’s University Council, a quasi-public body that coordinates relations among the universities and between them and the state.
"In the 1970s, when the interest rate on loans was lower than inflation, it wasn’t so hard for students to pay back, he says. "Now, many students don't pay off their loans for 20 or 30 years, and some don't pay them off at all.”
A former official in the education ministry, Mr. Nyborg says that higher education did not receive sufficient economic or political support when he was in the government. That, he says, is one of the reasons why he is now working on behalf of the universities.
"We have to understand that the wealth we have acquired from our North Sea oil should be spent on building the system back up, he says in an interview in his office on the University of Bergen campus.
"We do have to spend more money, much more money on higher education, but that in itself will require a drastic change in attitude,” says Mr. Nyborg.
“Higher education is not yet an intrinsic enough part of our culture.”