KTH is Sweden’s largest and oldest Technical University, founded in 1827. KTH is a single faculty HEI in Engineering.
Basic facts about KTH:
Annual turnover 530 M Euro
Employees 5100
Turnover share of research 75%
Turnover share of external funding 50%
Professors/Tenured faculty: 600
Total of undergraduate students:13000
New master students/year: 2500 (1300 international students)
PhD students 1800 (strong domination of international students)
KTH offers 18 full five year programs, divided into one three-year Bachelor program-component and one two-year Master program-component. This leads to a Master of Science in Engineering degree. KTH also offers 60 independent Master programs leading to Master of Science degree. All Master level programmes and courses at KTH are conducted in English.
KTH also provides 4 year PhD programs in a variety of sub-disciplines. KTH has established formal strategic partnerships with major Swedish companies and organizations: Skanska, Bombardier, Vattenfall, Scania, Ericsson, ABB, Stora Enso, SAAB Systems, Sandvik, Stockholm County Council and the City of Stockholm.
Several national research centers are hosted by KTH. KTH is also a major partner in two out of three European Knowledge and Innovation Communities formed by the prestigious EU organization EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology); InnoEnergy within the field sustainable energy and EIT ICT Labs within information and communication research. Five strategic multidisciplinary research platforms have been formed to further enhance KTH’s attractiveness as a major strategic research partner.
The activities and experience of the organization in the areas relevant for this project. The skills and/or expertise of key persons involved in this project
KTH decided at a very early stage in the development of its internationalization policy to encourage academics and students to develop and enroll in double degrees/Joint Programmes. The first Double Degree student came to KTH in 1991 to study for the engineering diploma as part of his specialization for the engineering diploma at a Grande Ecole in France. The know-how of credit validation and guidance of the students was built up at School level. KTH then developed its model of having a Director of Studies for each Engineering Programme with a comprehensive responsibility of validation of all studies over the students’ 5.5-6 years study programme.
With the development of the Bologna two year masters programmes as final specialization of the engineering programmes and through the deepened cooperation with a number of top-level technical universities within the CLUSTER-network, KTH developed the model of Dual Master exchange programmes. Program directors of two master’s programmes with similar or complementary scope and level get together to design a joint study programme allowing students to spend a one year of full studies at each institution and obtain the two master’s degrees without prolongation of studies. This exercise built the know-how of developing joint educational programmes at faculty level as well as the necessary know how at central level to support the initiative from the administrative perspective.
When the Erasmus Mundus-programme was launched, KTH was then more than ready to develop EMMC-programmes with its partner universities. This was also a way of being proactive in developing global recruitment in the perspective of the upcoming introduction of very substantial tuition fees in Sweden for non-European students in 2011. KTH was successful in the application process and became coordinator of five Erasmus Mundus Master Courses and partner of another four programmes of the same kind in a 3 year time. This helped the institution to further build up know-how both on the curriculum development side and on the support side (coordination of recruitment, tuition fee policies, admissions, issuing of diplomas, recognition, accreditation, etc).
This success also made it urgent to set up administrative procedures for handling the grants and mainstreaming the international students. Resources for this was put in the International Relations office centrally at KTH that took care of matters of finance, admission, accommodation, visa issues, etc, in communication with the Schools that are responsible for the academic records.
As the tuition fees were introduced KTH also took the step to be much more active on international recruiting. Four strategic geographic regions were identified for recruitment. Staff was employed in the central University Administration to raise activities in social media and attending student fairs. For example KTH started a home page in Chinese language through weibo.com.
This recent developments pushed KTH towards the development of Joint Programmes beyond the European borders and to pursue studies on how to develop innovative and effective JPs.
KEY PERSONS
Vice President for Global Affairs, former Dean of the Electrical Engineering Faculty, active in the field of Internationalization of HE in the past 10 years, active in the development and management of Double Degrees and Joint Programmes both at Faculty level and under the umbrella of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology KICs
Mr. Torkel Werge is responsible for supporting the development of double- and joint degree agreements at KTH University Administration and for supporting the university management in policy issues related to international relations in general. One specific responsibility is the coordination of the process at KTH for the dimensioning and prioritizing of exchange agreements. Before that he was responsible for double degree agreements and student guidance in different Schools.
Mr. Mirko Varano works as International Programmes Advisor at the International Strategy Group within the Department for Communication and International Relations. He has served different universities and international organizations in the field of international education in the past 23 years covering different positions and has developed and managed around 100 EEU and national projects in the field of international cooperation.
Carl-Gustaf Jansson is a Professor in Artificial Intelligence at KTH. PhD from KTH in 1986. Since 2011 the Director for the Master School of EIT Digital spanning nine European countries and 20 universities and extensive outreach activities to the BRIC countries. Also Director of the KTH ICT Research Platform since 2009. Since 1990 he has lead research and supervised more than 30 PhD students in Artificial Intelligence in particular in Machine Learning and Intelligent Interfaces. Vice Dean of the KTH ICT School, Chairman of ICT recruitment committee.