"In view of global developments in recent years, it is all the more important to commit to protecting scientific integrity and academic freedom."

In 2021, swissuniversities reaffirmed the importance of academic values and scientific integrity. On the one hand, with its declaration on academic values, swissuniversities has recalled the two principles of institutional autonomy and academic freedom. In view of global developments in recent years, it is all the more important to commit to protecting these endangered principles. In this context, institutional autonomy and academic freedom make a fundamental contribution to the stability of society and democracy.

On the other hand, with a jointly developed code on scientific integrity, swissuniversities, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Innovation Agency Innosuisse and the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences are committed to ensuring that integrity is practised throughout the scientific community and misconduct is avoided. This code of conduct also recommends structures and benchmarks for establishing procedures to deal with violations.

At the same time, swissuniversities has lobbied the Swiss Conference of Higher Education Institutions (SHK) to create a national competence centre which, in the interests of the Swiss university landscape as a whole, facilitates consistent and transparent application of the standards for scientific integrity and better cooperation between individual institutions in this area. The SHK is assigning a project group to assess the different options for establishing such a centre.

"The current programmes have been successfully launched."

Higher education institutions receive federal project contributions that enable them to conduct innovative projects – either jointly or individually – which are of Swiss-wide relevance to higher education policy. Most of the calls for submissions for the 13 programmes during the ERI period 2021–2024 have been concluded. The projects have been selected and work has started. The current programmes build upon preliminary work carried out by swissuniversities. In accordance with the mandate from SHK, the focus is on the following topics: the promotion of young talent (via the dual competencies profile and mobility promotion for doctoral students and further development of the third cycle), digitalisation (within the context of the focus areas ‘Open Access’, ‘Open Research Data’ and ‘Digital Skills’), equal opportunities, as well as network consolidation and career development in the area of subject-specific education.

"The task of developing the Swiss Higher Education Policy Coordination 2025–2028 is made more complex by Switzerland’s exclusion from Horizon Europe."

Swiss higher education institutions develop a strategic plan every four years (Swiss Higher Education Policy Coordination) and present it to the Swiss Conference of Higher Education Institutions. Within it, they define common goals and measures and calculate the required federal funding in accordance with the Higher Education Act. The Federal Council decided to put the ERI Dispatch 2025–2028 forward for public consultation. In May 2021, the SHK Higher Education Council subsequently gave swissuniversities the mandate to submit a Swiss Higher Education Policy Coordination as soon as May 2022.

Overall, it is clear that the mandate for Swiss higher education institutions is widening: existing priorities are to be pursued, while new areas are being added. In particular, the mandate is putting a focus on sustainability, digitalisation (especially Open Research Data) and equal opportunities in the latest ERI period. The task of developing the Swiss Higher Education Policy Coordination 2025–2028 is made more complex by Switzerland’s exclusion from Horizon Europe. Thus, the work of the Swiss Higher Education Policy Coordination Delegation in 2021 was mostly concerned with preparing swissuniversities’ submission. The Swiss Higher Education Policy Coordination 2025–2028 is adopting a perspective that covers all types of higher education institutions. In the thematic chapters, the content will be more equally balanced across the different types of institutions, and issues that are specific to each one will be covered where appropriate.

"International solidarity of the academic community."

The events in Afghanistan in August 2021 also affected swissuniversities and the Swiss higher education landscape. Concern for the future of the academic community in Afghanistan led several higher education institutions to enquire about the possibility of hosting researchers. The international network ‘Scholars at Risk’ therefore attended the plenary assembly of swissuniversities in October to provide an update on the situation and to strengthen solidarity among the international academic community.

Within the context of the Scholars at Risk Switzerland network, which is supported by SNSF grants, the extent to which Afghan researchers could be accommodated at Swiss higher education institutions is now being assessed.

swissuniversities has been a member of Scholars at Risk since 2017 as part of its clear commitment to protecting academic freedom. swissuniversities is also committed to preserving fundamental higher education values, as shown by its participation in the ‘UniversitiesForEnlightenment’ network, for example.

"Microcredentials are an emerging topic."

Microcredentials are an emerging topic in the international higher education landscape. swissuniversities initiated discussions aimed at developing a better understanding of potential future developments in this area and of the implications for higher education in Switzerland. Generally speaking, a microcredential is a qualification that certifies very specific skills or knowledge acquired during a short course or module. These qualifications are flexible, as they can often be gained online and be freely combined, thus opening up new learning opportunities to a broad audience. The EU countries are all in the process of considering how this new concept might affect conditions for them at national level. The same is also being done in Switzerland: in 2021, swissuniversities actively participated in the European MICROBOL project, which aims to assess the suitability of the Bologna tools for the use and development of microcredentials.

"With the update of the nqf.ch-HS, the Qualifications Framework for the Swiss Higher Education Area was politically approved for the first time for all higher education institutions."

In 2021, swissuniversities updated the Qualifications Framework for the Swiss Higher Education Area (nqf.ch-HS) to take into account the new legal foundations, namely the Higher Education Act, the Ordinance of the Higher Education Council on the Coordination of Teaching at Swiss Higher Education Institutions, the Ordinance on Admission to Universities of Applied Sciences, and the Accreditation Ordinance.

To describe programmes at bachelor’s, master’s or PhD level, the Dublin Descriptors of the QF-EHEA, which were developed in 2004 by a working group of the Joint Quality Initiative, are still used. The continuing education descriptor was excluded from the update. swissuniversities’ “Key figures for continuing education” have served as the reference for continuing education since 2020 and have been approved by the Higher Education Council as standardised framework regulations.

In November 2021, the Qualifications Framework for the Swiss Higher Education Area was politically approved for the first time for all higher education institutions by the political body, the Swiss Conference of Higher Education Institutions.

"The higher education institutions are taking various measures to improve interprofessional collaboration and primary care."

In 2021, swissuniversities submitted its final report on the special programme “Increasing the number of degrees in human medicine” to the Swiss Conference of Higher Education Institutions. Ten universities that offer degrees in human medicine participated in the special programme, which was conducted in the period 2017–2020. The aim of the programme was to permanently increase the number of degrees in human medicine to at least 1,300 per year by 2025. In 2017 to 2020, the federal government allocated CHF 100 million in start-up financing in the form of project-related grants. In order to address uncertainty in healthcare, the main focus is on projects that contribute towards improving interprofessional collaboration and primary care.

The special programme is one of the most ambitious and complex higher education projects that swissuniversities has initiated and coordinated in recent years. By increasing the number of study places, the institutions make an important contribution to ensuring access to medical care in Switzerland.

In swissuniversities’ final report on the special programme, it was found that the target of 1,300 qualifications is likely to be reached from 2025. It also shows that the higher education institutions have taken appropriate measures to improve interprofessional collaboration and primary care.

"Promoting communication and transparency on the subject of animal testing."

Animal testing has always been a hotly debated topic in Switzerland. On 13 February 2022, the Swiss electorate voted against the popular initiative on banning animal and human experiments. In its statement, swissuniversities warned that adopting this initiative would constitute a de-facto ban on medicine and research. In addition, it worked with the Swiss Animal Facilities Network (SAFN) to create several fact sheets on important topics relating to animal testing.

Since 2020, swissuniversities has also made related information concerning the individual higher education institutions available on its website, in particular the animal testing statistics published each year by the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO) and the COVID-19 pandemic measures that were adopted for the partial lockdown in 2020. These publications all serve the objective of open and transparent communication by the scientific community. This same goal is also pursued by the Swiss Transparency Agreement on Animal Research (STAAR), which will be launched 2 June 2022 with swissuniversities as the lead partner. swissuniversities thereby wants to help the higher education institutions tackle ethical and scientific challenges related to animal testing.

"Diversity is a key factor in nurturing excellence."

In its various committees and in dialogue with partner institutions at national and international level, swissuniversities focused its attention on improving equal opportunities and diversity in the year under review. It did so with a particular focus on the question of how young talent could be promoted more effectively, and with the conviction that diversity is a key factor in nurturing the excellence of the institutions.

Together with the Federal Statistical Office, swissuniversities also enhanced its gender monitoring for recording the appointment of female and male professors at universities. Further fundamental components have also been derived from the programme Equal Opportunities and Higher Education Development 2017–2020. For example, action plans of the individual institutions enabled the concept of equal opportunities to be further embedded within the organisations. In addition, eleven prominent collaboration projects were successfully completed. Last but not least, the programme provided a framework for launching a survey on dual careers at higher education institutions.

In 2021, the successor programme 2021–2024 was launched, along with an initial series of projects that not only address gender equality but also other dimensions of inequality, such as disability and (social) origin. A second series of projects will start in 2022.

"Improving subject-specific education through national programmes and cooperation between different types of higher education institutions."

The Board of swissuniversities adopted the ‘Swiss National Strategy for Subject-Specific Education 2021–2028’ in December 2021. The strategy was developed with the involvement of the subject-specific education delegates and the three Chambers of swissuniversities. It also took into account the recommendations of a panel of experts.

With the National Strategy for Subject-Specific Education, swissuniversities has defined a common understanding, accepted by all higher education institutions, of the principles for future cooperation across the institutions to improve subject-specific education in the Swiss higher education landscape. In the form of four objectives, five fields of action and 14 associated priorities, the strategy describes which developments are needed to achieve this. The strategy is accompanied by an action plan containing potential measures for achieving the strategic objectives.

The P-9 2017–2020/21 programme ‘Development of academic skills in subject-specific education’, which had been extended by one year and provided the impetus for developing the National Strategy for Subject-Specific Education, was also successfully concluded at the end of 2021. The programme gave rise to fundamental development activities in the three areas ‘study programmes’, ‘promotion of young talent’ and ‘networking’.

The primary goal of the successor programme P-9 2021–2024 ‘Subject-specific education: network consolidation and career development’ is to consolidate the structures created in 2017–2020/21. It also aims to improve career opportunities for young academic talent in the field of subject-specific education.

"Sustainable development is a key topic for Swiss higher education institutions."

Sustainable development is a key topic for Swiss higher education institutions. They address it through various projects and measures in the areas of research, teaching and operations and, since 2020, also through the ‘Sustainability at swissuniversities’ network. The swissuniversities Sustainability Network commenced its activities in 2021, which included formulating an opinion on the Sustainable Development Strategy 2030 for swissuniversities. At the 2021 network meeting, different perspectives and trends on higher education institutions and sustainability were discussed, and potential action areas for the network were identified.

To consolidate swissuniversities’ position on the topic of sustainability and to approach the topic in a coordinated way across the different types of higher education institutions, the Board of swissuniversities has instructed the Higher Education Policy Coordination Delegation to draft a comprehensive position paper on the topic of sustainability, which is to be completed in 2022 and should cover the perspectives of environment, economy and social justice.