Massification, unification, marketisation, internationalisation: a socio-political history of higher education in Sweden 1945–2020

Abstract

Since the mid-twentieth century, higher education has been subject to spectacular growth. While the expansion of higher education is undoubtedly a general trend, its actual characteristics in terms of its specific conditions and driving forces vary by context. In this article, our aim is to develop such a socio-political historical narrative of Swedish higher education since 1945. We focus on how the Swedish case evolved in four salient aspects: (I) the transformations of the welfare state and the economy broadly defined; (II) the policies directly involved in redesigning the higher education system; (III) the scale, composition and structural relations between the parts of the higher education system; and (IV) the way different social groups (vis-à-vis gender and class) have used the system. We show that higher education policy has shifted its focus from massification and unification to marketisation and internationalisation. We notice that the conditions for the expansions differ substantially during the first three decades after 1945 compared to the 1990s in political, economic and demographic terms. While the system has opened up for increased participation overall, the way students are sorted into different institutions and fields of study by gender and class reveals a remarkably rigid social structure.