The Dean of Lunds U and his innovative résumé

Some of you may or may not have heard about the recent controversy surrounding the Dean of Lund University. In short Per Eriksson, the Dean, has recently been accused in the newspaper Sydsvenskan of being elected dean on false premises. He is also being accused of being promoted to professor on false qualifications.

Per Eriksson was appointed Dean of Lund University in 2008 and was before that in charge of the stately run investment agency Vinnova and was the Dean of Blekinge Tekniska Högskola for 10 years before that. Eriksson attracted controversy from the start due to his previous involvement in the Pentecostal church and the fact that hörandeförsamlingen, an advisory body of students and staff at the university, suggested another man for the position.

The recent controversy stems from a background check on the résumé that Per Eriksson used to apply for promotion to the rank of professor as well as for the position of Dean of Lund University. Eriksson claims in his résumé that he was the head advisor on two dissertations and acted as assistant advisor for five research students. However, his name is not registered as head advisor for the two dissertations and the authors of the papers tell Sydsvenskan that he was very inspirational to their work but that he was not their head advisor. Furthermore Eriksson claims, in his résumé, to have three patents but the first one is expired, the second one never existed and the third one was approved after he applied for the position.

The university has now launched a probe into these allegations which will produce its findings sometime in December. We at the international secretariat believes that if the Dean can’t be trusted to tell the truth on his résumé he can’t be trusted with the care of the university nor to have the confidence of the students. So the next time you are caught cheating just tell the teacher that you just did an Eriksson.

New Language Cafe at Smålands

We're going to have a new language cafe at Smålands starting on Thursday, November 18th at 5pm. Come and practice a new language or help others with your own language! Our hope is that people can meet new people and make new friends. We'll have coffee, tea and snacks available. If enough people come then we can make this a regular event!

Here's our facebook event page. Sign up and tell us what language you'll be representing!!!

About our organizers: Lynn is a native English speaker and arguably fluent in Swedish. She arranges and teaches many evening language classes and has lots of training in education. Bo loves languages and speaks too many... Faroese, Swedish, Danish, French.... well, we could go on but we'll stop here.

Suspect for Racist Shootings Captured

The police have brought in a suspect for the spate of racist shootings during the last year. Here is an article from the BBC. We really hope that they've caught the right person! I'm sure a lot more details will be emerging soon.

Shooter in Malmö Targeting Immigrants?

It has been revealed in recent news reports that a shooter may be targeting people "with immigrant backgrounds" in Malmö. Immigrants have even been warned by the police to not go out at night and to exercise more caution. What the press is not reporting but what I am inferring is that these attacks are not directed against immigrants - they are directed against people with non-white skin color. The shooter has not been caught but it seems as though the shooter has no direct connections with the people he/she has attempted to kill.

People from Finland make up the largest group of immigrants in Sweden. Should they be staying indoors at night? No, the shooter seems to be going after the "wrong" kind of immigrants; the same kind of immigrants which are generalized by the Swedish media to represent all immigrants - those from the Middle East. As an immigrant myself, I am in all likelihood in no danger of being shot by this person. I have light skin. The shooter has had no contact with his/her victims so there's no way the shooter would know if he's shooting an immigrant or someone born in Sweden. It's time for the Swedish press and the police to realize that their own stereotypes about immigrants are leading to inaccurate information and the continuation of the stereotype of the immigrant as non-white. We deserve not to be painted in such broad terms - we come in a range of colors and backgrounds; simplifying such a broad group of people can only lead to trouble.


Note: Although the articles I linked to are written in English, the same terms (i.e., immigrant background) are used by the Swedish press

No End to Discrimination Against Foreigners by the National Agency for Higher Education

In the beginning of fall semester 2010, The National Agency for Higher Education (in Swedish, Högskoleverket) changed their admission rules. They create different evaluation categories for those who were applying based on Swedish high school grades, those who were applying based on the "högskoleprov" (a country-wide test), those who had previously studied at a "folkhögskola" and those that did not study high school in Sweden. Those with non-Swedish high school grades (excluding those who had studied at International Baccalaureate schools) were put into their own "evaluation category" and, in essence, had to "compete" with those in the other categories for acceptance spots. At least one-third of the spots were reserved for students applying with Swedish high school grades and another one-third was reserved for those who had taken the national exam.

What this meant was that foreigners could easily denied acceptance (regardless of their grades) if enough people with Swedish high school grades and those who had taken the national exam applied. I myself was denied acceptance on the basis of my non-Swedish high school grades. When I found out the reason for this (because it was not clear from the application results, which only stated that I was placed in "Reserve group 2"), I became so upset that I considered leaving Sweden. I was being punished for learning Swedish and applying for a course in which few other non-Swedish people applied. My grades, which couldn't be reckoned with, were never considered. My application was never considered... because I had not studied at a Swedish high school. And it happened to many others too.

Not surprisingly, studera.nu does not have any information about the new acceptance rules in English. Here it is in Swedish.

Swedish people who had graduated high school before 2003 were also punished because the new rules assigned extra points to those who had studied languages starting from 2003. This meant that sought-after programs were shut out to older students. The Swedish press focused mostly on this aspect of discrimination in their coverage of the new admission rules. This was not deemed discrimination - just indirect discrimination. Lund University admirably decided to change their admission rules to admit the foreign students who had been denied admission because they had not studied high school in Sweden - let's give a big applause to them! Other colleges and universities did not follow suit, unfortunately.

I reported this to the Discrimination Ombudsman. I expect it to be a lengthy process. So far all I've gotten is an acceptance of my report and a copy of a questionnaire sent to the college in which I applied to with a deadline in the middle of September. I can only hope that the government will step up and put a stop to this discrimination and that my report will hurry this along.

In the meantime, I can only wonder... what were they thinking?

Tuition Fees - Just How Much Are We Looking At?

Lund University has released information in Swedish about what kind of costs non-European students will be looking at. This update states that most fees will be between 90,000 and 140,000 SEK per year while other programs (especially in the arts) will run up to between 190,000 and 400,000 SEK per year. The program for pilots will cost students about one million crowns per year. I wish I was making this stuff up. These fees do not, of course, include housing or anything else. As of yet, there is no guarantee for housing.

Malmö Högskola has listed their tuition fees clearly in English. Want to study Interaction Design (what the hell is that?) - better be prepared to hand over 320,000 SEK. And let's not forget the application fee at studera.nu is now 900 SEK.

We've already stated why we're opposed to tuition fees for non-European students. Now we're going to just sit back and watch this whole thing crash and burn - there's no way anyone with any sense at all would pay that much for an education that is of questionable quality. We expect to see many programs go under because of this. How exactly can a university justify charging so much when they can't meet students' housing and other needs? What exactly will happen when some hapless rich students pays the tuition and can't find anywhere to live?

Finding Work

Many international students come to Lund with the idea that they can find a part-time job to earn some extra money. In many cases, these students never end up finding work. Why?

1. Unless you have specialized skills (largely IT), you have to be able to speak at least some Swedish if not fluent Swedish. You may think that Swedish isn't required of you, but your employer probably truly believes that Swedish is a necessary skill for a cleaner or dishwasher.

2. The economy sucks. Youth unemployment is very high right now and although lots of different political parties talk about giving people opportunities, there has been very little improvement in regards to the situation many young people face.

3. Employers discriminate against foreigners. I used to have a non-Swedish last name. Then I changed my name to a Swedish last name. I applied for the same job I had applied for 3 months previously with the same qualifications and suddenly I got a phone call asking about an interview. Coincidence? I find it hard to believe. Now why would employers discriminate against foreigners? Many employers may suspect that an applicant doesn't speak "good enough" Swedish, claim that they've had bad experiences with other foreigners or have a myriad of other stupid reasons. None of them actually hold up when examined closely. Unfortunately there's very little you can do about this if you don't want to change your name.

4. Many foreigners don't have contacts in Sweden and networking and contacts are the key to finding a job. Unfair as it is, Sweden is not a meritocracy. It doesn't matter how many years you've worked at a pub if there's another candidate that knows someone that knows the pub owner. Go out and spread the word that you're looking for a job. Talk to anyone that might have contacts. Meet new people! And when applying for a job, if possible then try to speak with the person in charge of hiring so that they feel like they know you!

Good luck!
If you do get hired for a job, you will most likely fill out a form with your personal information and your bank account information. That's all. In all likelihood they will not take a copy of your passport, inspect your residence permit or even check your ID card. Most businesses pay salaries on the 25th of each month for the previous month's work.