Stockholm academic forum and Chamber of Commerce invitation to SBS academic

Professor Peter McGregor, Head of Economics, was invited to Stockholm at the end of November to present an academic seminar at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and a lecture to an invited audience at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce. Both events, and a dinner and business lunch, were jointly hosted by the Forum, which is a collaboration of the 19 universities and colleges in Stockholm, and the Chamber of Commerce -the biggest Chamber in Sweden - with thousands of affiliated members and a strong interest in fostering economic development.

The lecture was followed by interaction with a panel of discussants, chaired by Professor Folke Snickars (Academic Forum and KTH), consisting of: Professor Lars Berman, President of Stockholm School of Economics; Peter Honeth, State Secretary for Research, Swedish Ministry of Research and Education, and Olle Vicktorsson, Director of External Research Relations, Ericksson.

There was considerable interest in the results of research into the regional impact of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), illustrated primarily with the Scottish case. The research was carried out with colleagues in the Fraser of Allander Institute, Professor Kim Swales, Dr Katerina Lisenkova and Kristinn Hermannsson, and was funded jointly by the ESRC and the Higher Education funding bodies of the UK. The presentations explored the expenditure impacts of HEIs, offering a critique of past studies of this type, and presented the first system-wide estimates of the impact of Scottish graduates on their host region. The "wider impacts" of Scottish HEIs were illustrated through knowledge transfer/exchange and the stimulus that graduates provide to the productivity of non-graduates.

There is particular interest in Sweden in the significant "natural experiment" that the UK is embarking upon, through the introduction of regionally differentiated HE funding mechanisms. Sweden has itself recently introduced student fees for the first time, but only for non-EU students, resulting in fairly dramatic initial declines in student numbers from the relevant cohort. There is potential for establishing a future collaborative research programme.