In the last ten years, relatively large groups have entered the labour market. At the same time, most societal sectors have expressed a clear skills shortage. The next ten years are expected to be even tougher and competition for skilled employees will intensify.
This development will also likely be reflected in a growing demand for higher education, where we can expect increasing competition to attract students. From this aspect, we believe that international students can play an important role – from a slightly narrower perspective to help fill our places, and from a broader perspective as a means to contribute to the skills supply regionally, nationally and internationally. A development project is underway this spring, where we look at the conditions for increasing the number of overseas students, also known as free movers.
Overseas students have not been part of our focus since 2011, when we had quite large groups of overseas students, and many can testify to the challenges we faced then. At the start of the autumn semester 2023, we had 13 overseas students, unevenly distributed across the 13 study programmes that we offer in English. We are currently conducting interviews with programme coordinators and international students, as well as analysing application patterns at Karlstad University and other universities. In March, we will present the preliminary results in a workshop format, and at the end of June, the outcome will be presented in a report on what needs to be done if we are to invest in overseas students.
As a next step, the idea is to conduct a pilot round with three to five study programmes that are provided extra resources and support to develop their activities over the coming years. Involvement from the private and public sectors is important for this type of investment to succeed. We have therefore invited representatives of the regional business clusters to a meeting in April, together with Region Värmland, local municipalities, Värmland Chamber of Commerce and other stakeholders to inform them about the project and discuss how they might contribute.
Eunice is another tool that can be used in our internationalisation efforts. During this academic year, we will present Eunice using a broad approach to give you an idea of how you can contribute and take part in the offerings of the ten participating universities in different ways. Alongside of these projects, we are working on an update of the action plan for internationalisation which spans the period 2024-2027, and which will include both of these initiatives.
Having said this, I would also like to point to all the other positive effects that can be achieved through increased internationalisation in the form of a higher level of quality of education and research as well as our support functions, and an even more inclusive and multicultural approach.
