Norway is really good at getting international students to come and study for their doctorate. For the twenty years more and more of these students have been coming to Norway. Now people from countries make up more than forty percent of the people who finish their PhDs in Norway. If you walk into a laboratory in Oslo or Tromsø you will hear people speaking German, Mandarin, Polish, Hindi. Norway feels like a place. The doctoral programs, in Norway look very competitive. International doctoral students are coming to Norway. They like it. Norway is a place for international doctoral students to study.
So a lot of researchers leave their jobs. This happens quickly within five years of finishing school. In fact 40 percent of researchers are gone from their jobs within five years of graduating. Researchers do not stay in their jobs for long around five years after graduating many researchers are no longer working as researchers.
The government has decided that it wants to make some changes. They just got a report that explains the problem very clearly: Norway is really good at getting talented people to come to the country but it is not very good at getting them to stay in Norway. The ministers are talking about how Norway needs to be competitive and come up with ideas. The people in charge of businesses are saying that they need people with a lot of training to be able to compete with countries. The numbers are showing that something is not working with the system for talented people, in Norway.
Norway looks like a place on paper. It has contracts and decent working conditions. The welfare system in Norway is also very generous. Many researchers from countries say that Norway is a safe and orderly place. They think it is a place where you can really have a balance between your work and your life. Norway is a place where work-life balance’s not just something people talk about.. This is only one side of the story, about Norway.
When you talk to people who have contracts you get a different idea of what is going on. It is really hard to get a job as an academic. There are not jobs available where you can work towards getting a permanent position. If you look outside of universities you will see that private companies do not always hire people with PhDs. Some researchers start thinking about leaving their job even before they finish their dissertation. This is not because they do not like Norway. Because they do not think they have a future in Norway. Researchers like these PhDs do not see a future, for themselves in Norway so they start planning their exit.
There are also the barriers that people face. Most international doctoral candidates, eight out of ten say they did not get information about how to build a career, in Norway after they finish their studies. To stay in Norway international doctoral candidates need to get a residence permit and to get a residence permit they need to find a job that pays a good salary. International doctoral candidates do not have a lot of time to find a job. The system can be very slow and confusing. When international doctoral candidates are not sure what to do they might decide to take a job in Berlin or Amsterdam of staying in Norway.
Language is really important. It is more important than people think. English is fine when we are in the lab.. It is not as good in meetings or when we talk to people in a casual way. This is where big decisions are made. Some researchers feel like they are on the outside. They are there. They are doing their work but they do not feel like they are really part of the group. One senior academic said that they felt like they were being left out after working for a long time. Other people talk about problems that happen every day. For example when they ask to travel people question it. They are not often given roles.. Sometimes when important things are being discussed people start speaking in Norwegian. Language matters in these situations. Researchers feel this way because language is not about speaking English in the lab. It is, about being able to communicate in all situations like meetings and informal talks. Language is important for Language to be effective.
At the time the tuition fees that were introduced in 2023 for students from outside Europe have really cut down the number of non-EU masters students. This might seem like a problem but universities think there is a problem, with the pipeline of students. The students who are most likely to stay in the country are often the ones who arrive early make friends learn the language and then go on to do a study. If fewer students come at the beginning then masters students will be around to stay on later as doctoral students.
There is also a problem. It is normal for academics to move around. Many Norwegians go to countries to get their PhDs. Not everyone wants to stay in one place.. When more than half of the research that gets done is paid for by people from other countries and they work together with them losing the people who have been trained to do this research starts to look like a lot of people are leaving, not just moving to a new job. This is an issue, with academic mobility and research output. Academic mobility is a thing but losing trained researchers is a problem.
The government is thinking about making some changes. They might change the immigration rules. Universities are saying that they want tuition fees to be gotten rid of. People are talking about universities working with companies. All of this shows that the government is aware of the immigration rules and the tuition fees and the universities and the companies. The immigration rules and the tuition fees and the universities and the companies are all being looked at.
What remains uncertain is whether structural change will follow. Retention is not only about welcoming words or integration workshops. It is about jobs, progression, and a sense of belonging that extends beyond contracts. Norway has shown it can attract global talent. The harder question now is whether it is ready to make room for it long term — and what happens if it doesn’t.
