Rectors fear for staff recruitment under Norwegian language rule

Norwegian universities fear they will struggle to recruit international staff under plans to require foreign academics to reach an intermediate level of the local language within three years.

Norway’s centre-left government wants to change the Universities and Colleges Act to address what it sees as a worrying decline in the use of academic Norwegian, despite concerns that new rules could hurt international recruitment.

Unveiling the measures, the ministry said the amount of English-language teaching had doubled in the past decade, while around 90 per cent of scientific publications from Norwegian institutions were now in English.

Under the changes, permanent staff with teaching duties would have to have B2-level Norwegian – the ability to speak spontaneously on many topics and produce and read complex and technical writing in a specific area.

Sunniva Whittaker, the rector of the University of Agder, told Times Higher Education the requirement could discourage applicants and made no allowances for how different Norwegian is from an academic’s native language.

“We fear that might be a bit unrealistic, depending on what language group you belong to. It’s more difficult for a Chinese person to learn Norwegian in three years than a German, but there’s no discrimination between different groups,” she said. “The workload is already very high and if you have to learn a new language in addition it might scare people off.”

She said it was unclear what penalties might be applied to universities or their staff who did not reach B2 within the time limit and that the change had come when some institutions were already facing an uphill battle recruiting from abroad.

She added that the language plan put too much emphasis on the proficiency of foreign staff and students and downplayed the resources needed to develop Norwegian terminology in smaller academic fields.

Other changes to the act include new parliamentary powers to decide whether campuses can be closed, which follows a years-long battle between the government and Nord University over plans to close a former teaching college on Norway’s north-west coast. Politicians eventually used a royal decree to keep the site open against the wishes of the university board.

The high costs and the difficulty of recruiting staff to remote campuses meant other universities could face similar decisions in the years ahead, particularly if budgets were to fall as the government had indicated, Professor Whittaker said, although she added that she was not aware of any universities with closures planned.

She added that shifting responsibility onto parliament would hurt institutional autonomy and the sector’s relationships with politicians. “Micromanagement and overruling the boards is not a very good idea,” she said.

The government is also introducing amendments to protect academic free speech or “heretical thoughts”, in the words of higher education minister Ola Borten Moe. It also wants to stop universities from hiring temporary staff for permanent tasks, because the use of temporary contracts is higher than in other parts of the Norwegian economy.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com