Engineering academisation: The transition of lower level engineering education from upper secondary school level to higher education

Abstract

In Sweden, engineering education at the upper secondary school level was transformed in the early 1990s into a 2-year programme at the higher education level. This development could be seen as an opportunity for higher education institutions to expand the volume of engineering programmes, but also as a sign of external pressure for changes in organisational structure and identity. The main aim of this chapter is to analyse and understand how technical universities acted upon and responded to the proposals to change the system of engineering education in Sweden. The study underlying this chapter is a historical documentary research study, complemented by a select number of semi-structured elite interviews. The results show that while the university colleges embraced the idea of transformation, the leading technical universities were less supportive. In fact, three of the four leading technical universities/faculties structured their new engineering programmes as a dual system within the framework of a seemingly unified system. One reason was to protect the core of the organisations’ identities as strongly anchored in their research and master’s programmes. In reality, they used the change process as a way to preserve or even strengthen their existing identity, without adding or removing anything.