Oddmund Løkensgard Hoel (Sp) moves up from state secretary to cabinet minister. His predecessor refuses to answer questions from the press.
Sandra Borch thanked her and handed over the key to her former state secretary. However, she would not give any answers to the press. Photo: Jan T. Espedal / Aftenposten
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Published: 23.01.2024 09:12 | Updated: 24/01/2024 13:56
Hoel was handed the key by his former boss at the ceremony at 12.30 Tuesday.
– Sandra, thank you very much for the important work you have done, I wish you had stayed longer, but now it is …, said Hoel and lost the thread a little.
– Now it’s you who controls the shack, Borch finished helpfully.
Sandra Borch then calmly left the room and refused to answer any questions from the press.
It is Oddmund Løkensgard Hoel who moves up and takes the boss’s job. He has previously been state secretary for Borch, who resigned on Friday.
Hoel himself has been in academia for a long time. He is a professor of history at the University of Western Norway. In addition, he has been state secretary for both Ola Borten Moe and Sandra Borch. He has been pointed at from several quarters, not least from the sector self.
Becomes minister of plagiarism
Hoel says he will continue the policy Borten Moe and Borch have led, and which he himself has helped to develop. One of the issues that will characterize his new everyday life is the same that was decisive for Borch’s departure.
A student was upheld in the Borgarting Court of Appeal after being banned from his studies for so-called self-plagiarism. Borch’s ministry appealed the case to the Supreme Court.
Then the news broke that Borch himself had plagiarized other assignments in his master’s thesis.
– Two ministers struggle with text similarity. Have you had a too strict practice?
– I don’t want to say that. In the new Universities and Colleges Act, we want a more nuanced approach.
He says they will nuance the punishment the students receive in different cases. Another area they want to make more nuanced is the reuse of their own text. Here they want to make a concrete distinction:
- Reuse of text that has not paid off
- Reuse of text that has paid off
Hoel says it should not be possible to deliver a text that has previously yielded results and get away with it in a new assignment.
– It should not be possible to give the same text twice for different exams and get twice as many credits for it. We can’t have it like this.
He says how this is to be resolved must be up to the local student councils, appeals committees and the judiciary.
Hoel says that cheating has been a bigger problem than some of the media coverage around it gives the impression of. He says it has given the impression that many students have received reactions that are completely unreasonable.
– We are completely dependent on trust in the universities and colleges, trust in the papers the students bring with them. That these give a real picture of the knowledge and competence that the students have. If we compromise this trust, we compromise trust in the entire education system.
Oddmund Løkensgard Hoel is a professor and will take over as the new Minister of Research and Higher Education after Sandra Borch. Photo: Cornelius Poppe / NTB
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Will lead several large projects
Hoel will have to deal with several major cases in the coming time. A new university and college act will be considered in the Storting in February. There will also be a notification to the Storting on the admissions system for higher education.
According to Støre, SMK has not carried out a text analysis of Hoel’s doctorate.
– We have carried out a rough check of the research minister’s doctorate.
Fact
Oddmund Løkensgard Hoel
New Minister of Research and Higher Education
Born in 1968. Comes from Trondheim, but has lived in Western Norway.
He has worked at the Norwegian University of Applied Sciences, at the department in Sogn og Fjordane, since 2007. He has been a professor since 2019.
He has led Noregs Mållag.
He has been a local politician for the Center Party in Luster municipality. He has been state secretary in the ministry since October 2021. Thus, he has worked under both Ola Borten Moe and Sandra Borch.
Ivar B. Prestbakmo (Sp) will be the new state secretary for the minister.
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Resigned for plagiarism
Borch resigned after revelations about a number of text similarities in her master’s thesis. In 2014, Sandra Borch was a student at UiT Norway’s Arctic University, where she submitted her master’s thesis in jurisprudence.
An examination of the master’s thesis by E24 shows that several passages in Borch’s thesis are identical to the text in master’s theses submitted by two other students.
On Saturday, Aftenposten was able to report that there was a greater extent of copying than was first known.
Now Borch will return to the Storting. Støre would not answer whether it is appropriate for Borch to return to government.
Hear political editor Kjetil B. Alstadheim explain the matter in the podcast Explained: