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This month, the second and last report “Increasing the Attractiveness of Sweden as a Knowledge Nation” has been released to the wider public. This report stresses the importance for Sweden to promote its high quality higher education. In fact, despite its high quality, Swedish HE is still not very visible in many other countries and therefore needs to be boosted by a long-sighted strategy. These are the main proposals put forward by the Inquiry Chair:
Moreover, the Inquiry recommends that internationalisation of HEIs be integrated in all relevant national policies, for which an increased cooperation between government agencies is a necessary prerequisite. In order to make this possible, the creation of an internationalisation platform is suggested. Such platform should consist of the Swedish Institute, the Swedish Higher Education Authority, the Swedish Council for Higher Education, the Swedish Research Council and Sweden’s Innovation Agency.
The Inquiry also addressed the issue of how complicated it currently is for an international student to apply to study in Sweden, due to the many stages students must go through and because the fragmentation of the system requires to submit different documents to different agencies. According to the Inquiry, application procedures could and should be simplified, for example via an online, joint, cross-agency procedure.
These are the main points touched upon by the Inquiry. But these recommendations are for the moment blowing in the wind, as no government has been yet appointed after the 9 September elections.