Indoor rain gutters and buckets are not an unusual site at the University of Oslo.
Norway's universities and laboratories are in serious need of repair, with facilities and equipment desperately needing funding and maintenance.
Rusty pipes and moldy boards. PHOTO: PER KRISTIAN AALE
In the cellar of the biology building at the University of Oslo water is being prepared for experiments. Crumbling concrete and spreading rust are evident. PHOTO: PER KRISTIAN AALE
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Aftenposten estimates the maintenance gap at about NOK 7.4 billion (USD 1.37 billion) and has documented university rooms with loose floorboards, poor ventilation, cracked walls and leaking roofs.
Over a display case in a building at the University of Oslo (UiO), a rain gutter has been set up indoors to lead water into buckets when the roof leaks during rainfall. The university is a collection of cracked walls and floors and roofs.
At the Institute for pharmacy advanced measuring devices must be cooled down in order to function. In the summer this laboratory cannot be used, and now the equipment is being cooled by a provisional set-up of air hoses.
"The building material has deteriorated so much that what was a maintenance task has become a renovation and rehabilitation job. In a few years our maintenance budget has doubles, but all we manage is a bit of mending and plastering where things are worst. We have no chance of bridging the maintenance gap," said UiO technical director Frode Meinich.
The current situation is due to decades of insufficient maintenance in educational buildings, technical installations and scientific institutions. Minister of Education and Research Øystein Djupedal was not prepared to comment on the situation.
The need for renovation finance is greatest at UiO, where NOK 4 billion is needed, more than the total annual state funding for the university. The University of Bergen needs NOK 2 billion and reports that their repeated pleas for financing are met with silence.
The Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) has many period buildings, many of them over a hundred years old.
"A large part of our maintenance budget goes to renovating the old buildings so they satisfy new regulations for fire, escape and ventilation safety. At the same time we must preserve the state of the buildings, which costs a lot," said dean Knut Hove.
Hove and Meinich agree that a national program of infrastructure modernization is desperately needed at Norway's universities.
"For the time being we are managing to keep the ship afloat, but if something serious isn't done in the next few years we have a major problem," Meinich told Aftenposten.
La librería de la Universidad de Oslo.


El plan para incinerar periódicos de hasta 200 años de antigüedad en la Universidad de Oslo fue pausado esta semana. La suspensión ocurrió tras la publicación de un artículo sobre este plan en el diario noruego ''Aftenposten''.

Los indeseados archivos ocupan cerca de 3 kilómetros de espacio y ni la Universidad ni la Librería Nacional están interesados en guardar más aún los años de historia.

La colección consiste de periódicos tanto nórdicos como no-nórdicos, entre ellos el Manchester Guardian, New York Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung y Le Figaro.

La incineración planeada de éstos en 2002 fue suspendida luego de que fueron trasladados a un almacén de Nils Christian Bang en ''Follum Grend'', cerca de Ringerike. Edgar Learn Borg, supervisor retirado de la colección, sigue involucrado en la preservación de la colección que no ha sido accesible para investigadores desde que fue movida.

Nuevamente, se ordenó limpiar el almacén. Frode Meinich, director técnico de la Universidad, dice que la colección no es única, e indicó que la Universidad necesita almacenar temporalmente muebles antiguos para la renovación de la facilidad de música en la universidad.

En 2007, Meinich había sido citado por ''Aftenposten'' en el cual esgrimía como necesario un programa de modernización de infraestructura a nivel nacional. "Por el momento, nos hemos arreglado para mantenernos a flote, pero si algo serio no es hecho en los próximos años, tendremos un problema mayor", señaló.