| Billions of research lies untouched |
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 Swedish universities and colleges have 12.8 billion on account of unspent funding. The sum has increased substantially in recent years. National Audit Office is critical. The Parliament has allocated substantial funds for research. The system should become more efficient so that research funds have been used as planned, including the contributions are monitored better, says Auditor General Gudrun Antemar in a report. The increase since 1998 is 74 percent, from 7.4 billion to 12.8 billion at the end of 2009. It is the same as a year's worth of external funding. Scientists are on average one year of their project. From 2005 the increase has been particularly sharp. - It's been good times in recent years. Research Stoppers has added new resources and there have been substantial increases, "said Peter Gudmundson, president of KTH, in which the unused funds for research almost doubled since 2005. - Roughly KTH has a billion. Mostly more than two billion the University of Lund Rector per Eriksson believes that one reason is that you get the money first, then you should set it in research. - In particular, the recent research stopper was the heavy in this way. We can not keep up really. National Audit Office points to three reasons why money is not used at the pace they are awarded. The amount of contribution has simply increased. In addition, money concentrated in fewer researchers in the so-called strong research. - For KTH wants is that it is difficult to get new on-site researcher. It takes time to recruit and it is sure to get good people. This applies not only professors and senior researchers, it can be difficult to get hold of good graduate students in certain subjects, "said Peter Gudmundson. The third reason, which the National Audit Office has found, is the researchers' bad job. A large part of the researchers is temporary and thus lose the job, when the project ends. When would you like to have a small surplus in the transition to the next project? Both presidents have plans to bring down the sum in the account for unspent research funds over the next few years. |
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