Faculty boards take over recruitment matters
From 1 January next year, the faculty boards at KTH's schools will be responsible for managing the recruitment and promotion of teachers, affiliations and the admission of docents.
"Ownership of the supply of skills is being shifted to those who know the needs of the organisation best," says Sofia Ritzén, Dean of Faculty at KTH, who led the working group that produced the basis for the President's decision on how recruitment matters should be organised in the future.
The basis for this is the increased collegial influence and responsibility that rests with the schools' faculty boards, which were formed last year. An extended working group was then asked to continue working on and preparing how recruitment matters could also be decentralised, and thus whether the central recruitment board could be abolished.
Speeding up the recruitment
The advantages, in addition to the proximity to and knowledge of the environment and the needs that exist, are several:
"We also hope and believe that this will speed up our recruitment processes, shorten lead times and strengthen quality through more operational-related decisions in faculty renewal, " Ritzén says.
The idea is to move the handling of the following cases to the schools:
- Lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor and professor
- Adjunct professor and visiting professor
- Affiliation as professor and faculty
- Admission of docents
Qualification assessments for promotion to associate professor and professor will continue to be handled centrally by the promotion board, but the schools will prepare and appoint experts.
Each faculty board will also set up a special committee to handle the appointments. It is likely that the admission of docents will continue to be handled by the Docent Committees at the schools, which will be appointed by the faculty boards. Clear processes will be in place to underpin this work, and the School offices will have appropriate management support for the task.
"We will also work to keep the procedure together so that all schools work the same way and can exchange experiences. After all, it is important that we interpret rules and policy documents in the same way. We will continue to have a quality baseline for the qualifications that apply to, for example, a professor or associate professor at KTH."
According to the decision, the President will continue to handle and make decisions on all matters relating to professors in accordance with what the Higher Education Ordinance requires and to have a uniform routine.
How will the workload of the faculty boards be affected?
"The future will tell - we don't know yet, but it's also an important strategic issue that should be prepared collegially. The number of cases is usually proportional to the size of the school," Ritzén says.
According to the President´s policy decision Inriktningsbeslut (pdf 117 kB) (in Swedish) taken before the summer, the next step for the working group will be to look at what the committees should look like, create joint procedures for quality assurance and standardisation, review which policy documents are affected by the changes and review how the processes can be made more efficient.
Text: Jill Klackenberg