"On behalf of BI, I want to congratulate Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre on the new government, and I look forward to a good working relationship. In our field, the Minister of Research and Higher Education is the one we will be working closest with. Therefore, I want to welcome and wish Ola Borten Moe the best of luck as the new minister for our sector. I look forward to great cooperation on important cases in the time to come," says Inge Jan Henjesand, President at BI Norwegian Business School.
"It’s great to see that the new government platform holds ambitions for lifelong learning and flexible education. With campuses in Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim, BI Norwegian Business School has established itself as a large and important provider of education in Norway, both for those taking their first full-time bachelor’s degree and for those that supplement with new and updated competence throughout their entire working life," Henjesand continues.
According to Henjesand, a range of points in the Hurdal platform can contribute to strengthening the competence Norway needs for innovation and change:
- Review the financing of studies with the goal of greater facilitation for full-time- and part-time students and ensure that the travel grant preserves equal rights to education all over the country.
- Increase the base financing for universities and colleges and contribute to compensating additional costs for institutions with multiple campuses.
- Implement a broad competence reform for working life and disclose a long-term plan for lifelong learning.
- Sort out how employees can work up a right to executive and further education.
- Make it more attractive for universities and colleges to offer shorter executive and further education courses and remove obstacles in the finance system.
- Secure that the Government contributes to financing the competence reform as a part of tripartite cooperation and consider establishing a competence fund to finance lifelong learning.