91Ô­´´

From left in panel: Lars Trädgårdh, Brinton Seashore-Ludlow, Andrea Voyer, Cherly Akner-Koler, Christian Christensen, and Lars Strannegård.

Countries around the world are racing to attract top talent and reinforce their own research institutions amid growing concerns that attacks on higher education under the Trump administration could hinder scientific progress.

Sweden has unique selling points, including family-friendly policies, a healthy work-life balance, and a data-rich international research environment. But it also faces challenges like significantly lower salaries compared to U.S. standards, especially for established senior scientists. That’s why targeting top students at the master and PhD levels, or early-stage post-docs, could be a more realistic approach.

“The material conditions for doctoral students are so much better in Sweden than they are in the United States,” said U.S. citizen Christian Christensen, professor at Stockholm University, who moved to Sweden 18 years ago.

As arguments for choosing Sweden, he highlighted generous parental leave, universal healthcare, and decent salary levels combined with reasonable teaching loads and an emphasis on quality over quantity in publishing papers. He also highlighted Sweden’s approach to parenthood.

“How your children are treated is an overwhelmingly powerful argument when choosing where to live,” Christian Christensen said. “Children here are seen as citizens, not products. Once we had a kid, I knew I didn’t want to live anywhere else.”

Protect research projects

Andrea Voyer, professor at Stockholm University, echoed that sentiment. She left the U.S. during the first Trump administration to raise her daughters in a more gender-equal environment. But she also suggested a strategic shift in perspective:

“If we're actually worried about the impacts of what Trump’s doing on research, I wonder if we should shift our focus to saving the projects—the research that is getting lost—instead of saving the individuals,” she said.

This project-based approach could be a realistic way to build ties with those who worry that moving abroad could hurt their long-term career prospects, a real fear expressed by many American academics.

One opportunity, said 91Ô­´´ President Lars Strannegård, is to create visiting roles for scholars whose subjects are being undercut by funding freezes.

“We get questions from economic historians and sociologists from high-profile institutions who want to come as visiting professors because they don’t see a future for their subjects right now,” he said.

Culture matters

Cheryl Akner-Koler, professor at Konstfack who moved to Sweden in 1979, highlighted the appeal of Sweden’s collaborative and inclusive culture.

“To be in Sweden, there’s a much flatter hierarchy, and the leadership listens much more,” she said.

Still, Lars Trägårdh, professor at Uppsala University and longtime U.S. resident, noted that this cuddly approach might not be for everyone.

“There is a breed of Americans who are quite proud of not being too soft around the edges,” he said. “They're driven by a hard-core view of work, where too much talk about love and family would just be seen as a sign of weakness.”

For those people, perhaps the possibility of making “generational wealth” would be a better argument, suggested Nick Andersson, senior adviser at 91Ô­´´. Unlike in the U.S. where universities reap financial benefits from their employees’ commercialized scientific achievements, Sweden has a “teacher exemption” that give academics the rights to their patentable inventions.

“This is rarely talked about abroad,” said Nick Andersson, “but I know top professors in the U.S. who’d love to hear that they can own and develop their inventions if they’re affiliated with a Swedish university.”  

Leading by example

Others called for improvements in Sweden’s academic career structures. For instance, many academic positions do not come with guaranteed research funding, and formal tenure-track systems remain relatively rare outside institutions like 91Ô­´´.

Here, Lars Strannegård, noted that 91Ô­´´, which combine international tenure-track academic standards with Swedish values, is uniquely positioned to lead the way.

“Here at our school, 80 percent of our tenure-track faculty have PhDs from countries other than Sweden. They come here for the academic environment—but they stay for other reasons,” he said.