Mikael on the increased need for education

Dear colleagues,

In light of the current situation and the expected development in the labor market, the Swedish government estimates that there will be an increased need for education to further develop previous skills. There may also be an increased need to change education to another direction or profession, or through open network-based education acquire new knowledge in areas that are relevant to developing current skills. Last Friday, the Swedish Ministry of Education and Research returned with a more specific request for the universities’ abilities to accept more students for summer courses and foundation year programmes.

This year, KTH has no advertised summer courses in the national round of admission, which closed in the middle of March. Therefore, the request for us concerns the possibilities of admitting significantly more students to our technical preparatory year and semester programmes.

The Ministry's proposal for allocation means that KTH should be allocated funds corresponding to 311 FTE for 2020 and 622 FTE for 2021. For 2020, this means that we would have 622 additional new students at the technical preparatory year or semester programmes, in addition to those we are already planning for (just over 700 beginners, which we have had in recent years).

Our Director of First and Second Cycle Education, Mats Nilsson, has during the week worked to review what opportunities we have to receive more beginners at our foundation year programmes already this fall. For the CBH School, it looks like we could increase in Flemingsberg with the help of digital teaching. We will return later with the details.

Soon we will conduct our staff meetings at SciLifeLab Solna, Flemingsberg, AlbaNova and Vallahallavägen via Zoom. The invitations to each campus meeting are coming soon.

Take care of yourselves and have a nice Easter!

Best wishes

Micke