Facts about Karolinska Institutet

Did you know that Karolinska Institutet (KI) is one of the world's leading medical universities? KI is consistently among the highest ranked universities in the world and has been dedicated to medical education and research since 1810. Since 1901, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has selected the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. KI's vision is to advance knowledge about life and strive towards better health for all.

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KI is Sweden's largest medical university. 34% of all doctoral students in Sweden in medicine and health sciences in Sweden are at KI. The university is divided into three departmental groups with a total of 22 departments. Activities are conducted at our two campuses in Solna and Flemingsberg, as well as at several hospitals and other healthcare facilities in the Stockholm region. 

KI in figures

  • 6 700 students
  • Over 2000 doctoral students
  • 5,553 employees
  • Research accounts for 85 per cent of KI's total annual turnover
  • 7,500 scientific articles per year
  • 75 per cent of all scientific articles are co-published with parties outside Sweden

Documents

Education

KI offers Sweden's widest range of medical education, both longer and shorter programmes and courses. KI has 13 entry-level programmes, 32 postgraduate programmes and 115 independent courses. Most of the programmes lead to professional and general degrees.

Discover KI's full range of programmes.

Master programmes taught in English

Bioentrepreneurship

Biomedicine

Global Health

Health Economics, Policy and Management

Molecular Techniques in Life Science

Nutrition Science

Public Health Sciences

Toxicology

Translational Physiology and Pharmacology

Doctoral education

Every year, more than 350 doctoral students graduate from KI. The doctoral students have backgrounds from several scientific fields and a large proportion come from countries other than Sweden.

Read more about Doctoral education at Karolinska Institutet

Research at KI

KI's research spans a broad field - from basic experimental research to patient-centred research and healthcare science. The close collaboration with the health care system provides good conditions for new research findings to quickly benefit patients. Clinical observations also provide the basis for new research ideas.

Read more about KI's research.

Outreach activities

Through close collaboration with healthcare, industry and other organisations, education and research results benefit society. KI has extensive international collaborations and a broad social commitment.

How KI interacts with the society.

Staff

In 2023, Karolinska Institutet had 5,553 employees, corresponding to 4,986 full-time equivalents. In addition to employees, there are a large number of affiliated persons who participate in KI's activities within the framework of their employment with another employer.

Do you want to be part of KI? See vacancies.

Economy

Karolinska Institutet's turnover in 2023 was SEK 8,399 million.

Key indicators

Education and research
Education and research 2023 2022 2021
FTE, full time equivalent, students (1) 6,517 6,456 6,487
-women (%) 73 73 73
Cost per FTE student (SEK thousand)* 183 180 172
APE, annual performance equivalents (1) 5,916 5,976 6,006
Cost per APE (SEK thousand)* 197 194 185
Number of fee-paying students 205 172 162
-women (%) 73 69 66
New doctoral student admissions 401 399 380
-women (%) 64 63 62
Doctoral students, total**** 2 173 2,163 2,167
-women (%) 61 62 61
Doctoral students with employment (FTEs) 774 751 750
-women (%) 61 61 59
Doctoral students with doctoral grants (FTEs) 0 0 0
-women (%) 0 0 0
Average study time, licentiate students (net) (3) 3,2 2,4 4,1
Average study time, doctoral students (net) (3) 4,2 4,7 4,7
Doctoral degrees awarded 329 390 353
Licentiate degrees awarded 3 2 5
Peer-reviewed scientific publications** i.u. 7,667 7,838
Cost per reviewed scientific publication (SEK thousand)*** i.u. 836 786
Personal
Staff 2023 2022 2021
FTE, full time equivalent, employees (2) 4,986 4,867 4,787
-women (%) 62 61 61
Avarage annual number of employees 5,553 5,447 5,363
Teaching staff (FTEs) (2) 833 799 816
-women (%) 52 51 51
Teaching staff with doctoral degrees (FTEs) (2) 764 728 745
-women (%) 49 49 49
Professors (FTEs) (2) 341 340 336
-women (%) 33 34 33
Ekonomi
Finance 2023 2022 2021
Revenue, total (SEK million), of which 8,399 7,863 7,560
Bachelor´s and Master´s education (SEK million) 1,280 1,253 1,220
- direct government funding (%) 83 84 85
- andel externa intäkter (%) 17 16 15
Doctoral education and research (SEK million) 7,120 6,610 6,339
- direct government funding (%) 32 34 35
- external revenue (%) 68 66 65
Costs, total (SEK million) 8,145 7,697 7,372
- staff (%) 52 52 52
- premises (%) 13 13 13
Premises costs (2) per m² (SEK) (4) 4,136 4,034 3,843
- share of adjusted total costs (%) 13 13 12
Balance sheet total (SEK million), of which 8,418 8,009 7,754
- unexpended grants 4,120 3,884 3,817
- change in capital for the year 255 165 188
- administrative capital (incl. change i cap. for the year) 2,175 1,919 1,752

1) Exclusive executive and professional education, contract and fee-financed education. On the production of statistics for 2020, data on HST and HPR students for 2019 were adjusted to exclude only executive and professional and contract education. Accordingly, some data have been adjusted in relation to previous annual reports. 

2) The production of statistics for 2022 was based on a full year rather than one reference month, as previously. Data for the comparison years have been adjusted accordingly.

3) Net study time.

4) Stated as per the ASHEI recommendation on premises costs concerning the collation of such costs, see annex 2 to the recommendations (REK 2014:1, 2015-10-26, ref. no 14/069).

* Including costs related to ALF grants and the Dental Clinic. On the production of statistics for 2020, cost data for 2019 were adjusted to exclude only executive and professional and contract education. Accordingly, some data have been adjusted in relation to previous annual reports. 

** Data for 2023 unavailable due to a lag in registrations. The data for total publications have been adjusted for all reporting years from 2019 to 2022 to account for database updates and registration lag.

*** Including costs related to ALF grants.

**** Data for 2020–2023 refer to the number of doctoral students during the spring term, while the data for 2019 refer to the autumn term. 

Sources: Ladok, Primula, Unit4 Business World (UBW), KI Bibliometrics system.