Criticized by many, and opposed by his own boss. LTH’s Chancellor Anders Axelsson shares his take on the procedure and respons to the criticism.
What does it mean in reality that your decision was repealed?
– It’s very unfortunate for Lund University in the capacity of a prominent institution of higher education. We are not shooting from the hip at LTH and, initially, we did have the support of the University board of directions.
Isn’t there any reason to believe the postgraduate student when she claims that she had no intentions of making her application misleading?
– No, I don’t believe there is. You can’t step out on a soccer pitch saying: “I didn’t know what offside was, but I’m still going to score goals.”.
Couldn’t the supervisor be considered challengeable since he himself examined the case of the postgraduate student?
– That does not come across as anything strange at all in my opinion. It is natural that you in the capacity of a supervisor carry out follow-ups on previous articles. It’s even the obligation of the supervisor to follow up the individual curriculum.
The concept of “submitted” has turned out to not be carrying any legal weight, what does that mean?
– You have to use this concept with care. Especially for young research students who haven’t had that many articles accepted, it means, by and large, that a magazine has accepted to take on an article for revision. Just because you have sent articles to a magazine, they are not submitted and, thus, they cannot be used as a means of applying for a position. What we have to now is to design a new regulatory framework for the hiring organs.
It is said by many that, especially at LTH, rules and regulations concerning postgraduate students are ignored.
– That is falsehood. We have very meticulous procedures.
Would you have made the same decision to downsize this postgraduate student if you could make another decision today?
– Yes, I would. Anything else would not have been ethically defensible.
Text: Tor Gasslander
Translation: Maximilian Aleman Tennell
