Nordic Delusions: Education Levels Dovetail Due to 'Excessive Digitalisation' (Part 1)

A three-part series on drastic changes in Nordic education, courtesy of massive setbacks in the OECD's standardised 'PISA' scores

Prelim: this is the first instalment of a three-part series on how digitisation has negatively impacted education on all (primary, secondary, and tertiary) levels, as evidenced by Sweden, Finland, and Norway vowing to ‘reduce screen time’ in schools to improve learning outcomes.

Originally written for TKP.at, you may find the three articles (in German) here, here, and here. I’ve edited these pieces for readability and updated content where necessary.

Why, if you’re asking yourself, am I making this content available here? Well, as the proud father of two primary schoolers I experience the ensuing maddening, mind-numbing, and soul-crushing discussions about ‘screen time’ literally everyday. Here’s hoping that these three pieces will help parents and concerned citizens alike who fight the good fight vs. digitalisation, screen time, and the seemingly unceasing (unshakeable) belief in the inherent ‘goodness’ and ‘virtue’ of ever more digitisation.

Note that the point of departure here is a small pseudo-libertarian party in Austria (NEOS, whose platform is best described as ‘socially liberal’—read: woke—and economically ‘hardcore neoliberal’) and its musings about what to do with (to) education as it currently exists.

As always, translations and emphases mine; all postings are ‘too long for email’; please read them online or via the app.

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NEOS with Woke-ism in Sheep’s Clothing instead of Clear Plans for Education Reform: A Report from Norway

By Stephan Sander Faes, TKP.at, originally pub. 24 March 2023 [source]

Recently, a parliamentary party once again spoke up about the vexed topic of “education” and called for Austrian conditions to be adapted to ‘the Nordic way’. Chairwoman Beate Meinl-Reisinger’s demand for ‘performance’ and ‘evidence’ is particularly absurd—if only because if the NEOS had spent a few minutes on these aspects, their arguments would be very different.

There are a lot of things ‘rotten in the state’ of Norway, and not ‘just’ for the past few days. This applies in particular to education and university policies, about which I would like to update you with reference to the above-indicated statements by NEOS.

First things first: I have been living in Norway since summer 2020, I am a history professor at the University of Bergen, a proud father of two elementary school-age children, and previously lived in Switzerland with my family for around 10 years. When I read statements like this about the advantages of ‘the Nordic Way’, it doesn’t make me feel bad, but it shows one thing above all: it’s nothing more than cheap political change—and it displays fundamental ignorance of the facts of live here ‘in the north’.

NEOS demand a ‘strategy based on the Nordic model’

These are the central concerns of NEOS according Austrian state broadcaster ORF :

In Austria, the school system has been ‘tampered with’ for decades without a strategy, criticized NEOS education spokeswoman Martina Künsberg Sarre at a press conference. ‘But as long as we don’t know where we want to go, we won’t find the way.’

Finland and Estonia, where she was on a fact-finding mission with party leader Beate Meinl-Reisinger, should serve as models.

‘We want to get to the top’, said Meinl-Reisinger. This is not only necessary in view of the increasing shortage of skilled workers. What is needed is a school system in which everyone has the best opportunities and which enables children to cope with the challenges of the future.

So far, so boiler-plate. Now, Ms. Meinl-Reisinger was on a ‘fact-finding mission’ in two countries. I hope she ate well and saw a few sights, too. ORF Online summarises how much useful stuff was ‘learned’ or at least seen as follows:

One lever is to rely on scientific evidence instead of ideology…Regular surveys of students can also be used to quickly counteract frequent bullying…

In Estonia there is also an overall strategy for the education system until 2035…True school autonomy is also not a utopia in the north: 90% of the decisions in Finland are made locally…

Despite all this, there is great trust in the children, teachers, and school management. There is no control by school quality managers like in this country [Austria; what is meant are the state-level ‘school inspectorates’]. The primary goal of the school in Finland and Estonia is that students and teachers feel comfortable there…

Equality of opportunity [orig. Chancengerechtigkeit] is also a big issue…In Finland, school materials including pencils are free, and school trips only take place if the school can finance them. The two countries should also serve as role models when it comes to digitalisation.

How nice. By the way, ‘here in the north’ milk and honey are on tap at every home and everyone loves each other.

Meinl-Reisinger talks about a variety of things and demands evidence from Minister of Education Polaschek—and the NEOS then indulge in more or less detailed ‘feel-good gestures’ that they find great.

Woke-ism in sheep's clothing

It's hard to find anyone who disagrees with these empty speaking points. Talking about an ‘overall strategy’ and hammering out the details associated with it are two very different pairs of shoes. For one, Austria is a federal republic with staggered responsibilities whereas both Estonia and Finland are unitary states (Norway is too, by the way)—and dissecting all of what this implies is probably too much of a good thing for a brief report.

That said, let’s focus on a few items here. First, the ‘primary goal of the school is…that students and teachers feel comfortable there’—and, apparently, reading, basic calculus, and writing are no relevant criteria for politicians in Austria: feel-good schools and ‘equal opportunities’ are important, even if Meinl-Reisinger is actually aiming to to join ‘the top’, which, though, requires ‘a school system in which everyone has the best opportunities’. Maybe in the NEOS parliamentary club we can learn how these things can fit together.

By the way, when Meinl-Reisinger speaks of ‘equal opportunities’ (orig. Chancengerechtigkeit), she means what is referred to in English as ‘equity’. This is by no means the ‘equality of opportunity’ [orig. Chancengleichheit] known from the 1980s, but to do with imposed ‘equal’ outcomes. Just don't let yourself be misled by such well-sounding phrases: what NEOS are demanding is little more than results (pre)determined by politicians or ideology, which is actually the complete opposite of what the NEOS are supposedly demanding. Historically, attempts to put these ambitions into practice (pun intended) bear names, such as ‘Bolshevism’, ‘Communism’, or ‘Maoism’.

Even more absurd words used by Meinl-Reisinger when she demands ‘evidence instead of ideology’—and with this in mind, we leave Austria and move on to ‘evidence’ from Norway.

Shortage of Skilled Workers

As in many other countries, there is a massive shortage of skilled workers in Norway. As state broadcaster NRK reported not long ago, the government assumes there will be a shortage of around 90,000 apprentices in 2035; the government's report can be found here .

The ‘suggestions for solutions’ from the ‘experts™’ can definitely…well, read for yourself:

‘Many companies have difficulty finding enough apprentices. At the same time, we have students who have difficulty getting an apprenticeship’, says Håkon Sætrang, who runs an apprenticeship agency in Viken [near Oslo]. He encourages students to move if they are rejected when applying for a training place in their region:

‘It is not always possible to offer something where the students live. We have companies all over the country, while schools are often centralised.’

In Austria and elsewhere across Europe, professional mobility (which is not associated with a commuter allowance) is known to be quite modest among adults. NEOS may want to provide appropriate state-financed or subsidised apprentice accommodation throughout the country so that they can make going to vocational schools more attractive for the country's teenagers.

6 out of 10 companies now lack workers. How about, dear NEOS, working towards making apprenticeships more attractive, for example through higher wages?

An Education System in Trouble

Not so long ago, a college degree was a ticket to a better life: sure, you had to postpone some things, such as starting your first full-time job, starting a family, buying a house, etc., Still, college degrees used to be something useful, both for the individual as well as for society in general.

However, it appears that the Western love affair with ever more (and ever more expensive) education is coming to an end. Those who have been paying attention have already seen the cracks in the system, especially if one has observed the American higher education sector and its many travesties, from the sky-high tuition fees (which cannot be paid off through private bankruptcy) to the questionable business plans of many private colleges, to the seemingly unstoppable increase in the number of precariously employed lecturers. It should be noted that these problems were already present well before the rise of ‘woke-ism’, which in many ways acts as an accelerant.

Here in Norway there was a -12% decline in new student applications in 2022: 134,954 or almost 19,000 fewer than the previous year. A new record was set in 2021 with 154,088 applications, but according to Research and Higher Education Minister Ola Borten Moe, this is not a very meaningful starting value (with many young adults enrolling due to the mandate-induced impossibility to go abroad).

Business administration is the most popular course of study in this country, while—fuelled by Covid mandates—’remote learning’ is increasing by leaps and bounds. However, Norway is simultaneously facing a crisis in kindergarten, primary, and secondary education:

‘I am very happy that we received more applications for teaching staff in grades 1-7 than last year, but I would like to see even better application numbers’, said Borten Moe. This is consistent with the data: only three higher education institutions have seen an increase in applications this year, while virtually all but a handful of colleges and universities have seen double-digit declines in student enrolment.

Norway’s Socialised Healthcare Sector is being Restructured—Due to a Staff Shortages

The number of applications for a place in one of the country’s nursing schools fell by 23% (!) in 2021/22, following a comparatively small decline of 1.6% last year (when Norway, as mentioned, saw a record number of applicants). In other words, as a result of Covid-19, the healthcare sector is in real crisis.

More and more people are realising this, and despite their best efforts, nursing is a thankless profession that offers little prospect of a better future and is certainly not an attractive career opportunity.

Nevertheless, it is not the case that the year 2022 would be completely without precedent, adds Julia Loge in the Forskerforum, the outlet of Norway's largest academic union, on 27 April 2022: ‘It is about as bad as 2013.’

‘At the start of the pandemic, many people may have thought that choosing nursing was safe and that they would be doing an important job. Now there are probably many more who have felt the effects of the poor pay and poor working conditions of nurses’, says Edel Marlèn Taraldsen, president of the nurses’ student association.

In terms of consequences, there has been an overall decline in applications in virtually all health disciplines, with the exception of medicine and nutritional sciences.

The statements of Nina Waaler, Vice Rector for Teaching at the Oslo Metropolitan University (same source as before, my emphases) show how otherworldly these debates are conducted here ‘in the north’:

One of the most important things we can do is to retain the nurses who have completed their training…It has become known through the media that many nurses have found themselves in a difficult position due to the pandemic. This could have contributed to applicants becoming less confident about choosing this training course.

Who is to blame for the misery? It is Sars-Cov-2 and Covid-19, and the whole mess has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with government policy or public health officialdom in this regard. Of course.

Incidentally, the ‘solution’ to the shortage of skilled workers in this country is to push immigration above all else. Here in Norway, these immigrants come mainly from Sweden, Finland, and the Baltics, with the largest national immigrant group being ‘the Poles’, plus all the corresponding resentment.

In other words: the ‘solution’ to these problems simultaneously fuels ‘right-wing’ resentment at home (due to immigration) and abroad (due to exacerbating comparable problems elsewhere). Or on ‘the left’, as the example of the Danish SP Prime Minister shows.

However, the (im)plausibility of these actions is shown by the report of the ‘Corona Commission’, which was presented in spring 2022.—For a detailed discussion, I refer you to my four-part series.

Since 2004, many of them have come from EU countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Health and care services are among the sectors that have a significant proportion of foreign workers. Labor immigration has made a large positive contribution to the Norwegian economy. Of course, this represents an obvious vulnerability in an international crisis where cross-border mobility is severely restricted. Reliance on foreign workers to maintain essential services leaves countries vulnerable in a global pandemic. (p. 446; my emphases)

The problem is not that Norwegian media emphasised the issues regarding hospital capacity (and left out all other aspects of the report), but that these are all known problems. From low wages to part-time employment to temp agencies that ‘bring in’ staff from East Asia, a variety of grievances can be seen that are also well known elsewhere, too.

Healthcare, Labour Shortages, and Education are Linked

Under ‘normal’ circumstances, there are two main things that could be done immediately to address the long-standing staff shortages: increasing salaries to make the field more competitive and/or improved working conditions.

It can be assumed that neither of these things will be done to actually ‘solve’ the problem: the economy is against it, the unions are too—and empty words come from politicians.

Before the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’, there was at least the possibility of overcoming additional constraints such as wear and tear, exhaustion, poor salaries and working conditions, at least in certain areas, through labour mobility; the future doesn't look so bright.

And then there are the bigger implications: regardless of incentives, with the looming shortage of skilled workers, applicants may do something different and orient themselves differently at every step, especially since the working conditions ‘later on’ are, to say the least, unattractive.

The Coming Crash of ‘Big Ed’ and its Restructuring

‘We need to reach more people with higher education and skills building opportunities’, Minister Ola Borten Moe told NRK in spring 2023. ‘We need to reach a larger portion of the population. But it also has a geographical dimension because many people live far away from educational institutions.’

The situation in the healthcare system in particular is legendarily precarious (by Nordic standards): if you want to see this for yourself, search the Internet for ‘fastlege krise’ (GP crisis): doctors and nursing staff are missing, especially in ‘infrastructurally deficient’ regions, but also in many cities the number of people who do not have a family doctor is high.

Among other things, the government is making changes to the Norwegian student loan programs to make it easier to obtain loans for shorter courses of study that can also be completed in combination with work.

‘Access to people and expertise is becoming a limiting factor in society. Simply put, we will run out of people and know-how long before we run out of money’, says Moe.

How this will be financed is not yet 100% clear. The government is throwing around terms like ‘trust the reform’, with the message being that universities and colleges should be allowed to design their own education programs to a greater extent. Moe:

It's a far less bureaucratic system. We are in the process of largely abolishing the New Public Management, the points system and the bureaucracy in research and higher education.

(As a university professor, I welcome the departure from the neoliberal university—although I have doubts that the administration will become ‘leaner’ as a result. The ‘points system’ mentioned in Norway means that—as in the healthcare system—the universities, in addition to the basic funding universities are paid are based on the Number of ‘credit points achieved’ or ‘graduated’ students or patients.)

Moe states that the higher education sector insists on a system ‘with many administrators and reports from the higher education institutions to the state’.

We will get rid of most of them and only have a few left. This frees up resources for the essentials. We are talking about a significant simplification of the financing system.

In other words: a total restructuring of the education and healthcare systems is currently being prepared.

Rectors will not receive less money for research or exchange activities, but they will have to take on more responsibility and prioritise what they consider most important. It's about more freedom for the individual institution, not about less money.

Another step the government is taking is to shift from a system that rewards educational institutions based on the number of graduates to support based on how many people actually complete their courses.

So it remains exciting. Because just when the NEOS, for example, apparently want to sell their reformist snake oil, the Norwegians are starting to implement ‘real school autonomy’ as part of the required ‘overall strategy’.

I assume that Ms. Meinl-Reisinger and her ilk will avoid such ‘suggestions’ like the devil avoids holy water.

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Bottom Lines

I wrote the above piece almost a year ago, and in many ways, we’ve yet to ‘reap’ the ‘rewards’ of the promised ‘reforms’.

If my own department is any indication, we’ll see budget issues coming down the line before too long due to the reduction of student enrolment. At the same time—and I cannot tell you how hilariously absurd I deem this—the department has just hired a new bureaucrat to ‘advise’ our graduate students on successful ‘research design’. Needless to say, the absurdity derives in no small part from the fact that my now-permanently employed co-worker has an unfinished Ph.D. (which is to say, he’s the literal textbook example of unsuccessful research).

For those who have children or grandchildren among you, my dear readers, keep in mind that while the above sounds like ‘first-world problems’ (and that’s true to a certain extent), given that Scandinavian countries are typically the go-to examples for other Western countries, the content of this report—and the subsequent two parts—is quite relevant.

Stay tuned for more absurdities in parts two and three, in which we’ll discuss the realisation, on part of Nordic governments, that digitalisation is a cul-de-sac.