The Norwegian government has distributed a fund of over €8.8 million to 13 universities and colleges for international educational cooperation with partners in different countries such as Brazil, Japan, India, South Africa, China, the United States, Canada, and South Korea.
According to the press release by the Norwegian Ministry of Education, this licence aims at strengthening Norway as a destination for education, SchengenVisaInfo reports.
“These licenses will strengthen Norway as a nation of knowledge. I am happy to see that the project we are now supporting means that more students can go on exchange to our priority partner countries,” the Research and Higher Education Minister, Ola Borten Moe, said.
A total of 30 projects will receive support throughout this fund, with Norway’s Arctic University (UiT) and NTNU top the list with the most awarded projects, while the largest cooperating countries are the United States, followed by Brazil and China. The subject areas of technology and natural sciences make up over half of the project, while social sciences make up about a quarter.
The University of Tromso, in addition, has received permission to offer international work experience to students within geosciences, and the university will work to improve the work relevance of the field’s education.
UiT will work to strengthen the collaboration with India and Brazil on the humanities, which will improve education that deals with climate change. The project will include perspective and knowledge from indigenous people in different regions in the Arctic, the Amazon, South Asia, and the Himalayas.
“It is gratifying to see that the project links education, research, and working life more closely together. It is also positive that more people have practice as a large part of their project, and that 20 per cent of the students will therefore have work practice as part of their exchange,” the director of the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, SveinungSkule, said, who is also the responsible for the awards through the UTFORSK programme.
Furthermore, OsloMet is also another institution that will be enabled to collaborate with Japan and China on education that improves competence in smart and sustainable infrastructure for roads and railways, while the University of Agder will, among other things, develop a partnership with Canada and India to improve information and communication technology education.
About 41 percent of the applications for RESEARCH 2021 are approved. The funds are distributed by the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir) through the UTFORSK programme. The programme is a central tool in the Panorama strategy, which is the government’s strategy for higher education and research cooperation with the countries mentioned earlier.