The Emergence of the Professional Field of Higher Education in Sweden

Summary, in English

The changing structure of the Swedish university system has shaped its corps of university teachers. The analytical device used to demonstrate this connection is the changing social functions of Swedish universities which serve as the lens through which we understand this change. We argue for five successive and historically added layers of functions: the training of church officials, state functionaries, experts of the industrial society, the welfare professions, and, finally, the mass of employees of the “knowledge society.” Each new function is superimposed on the existing ones, adding to the complexity of tasks, areas of knowledge, and teacher categories in the universities. The position of the university as the arbiter of the highest form of knowledge, the internal differentiation of the field of higher education, and the growth and stratification of its teaching corps are three main building blocks for this history of the Swedish system of higher education.

• Author: Ola Agevall; Gunnar Olofsson
• Publishing year: 2013
• Language: English
• Pages: 1-22
• Publication/Series: Professions and Professionalism
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 2
• Links: https://journals.hioa.no/index.php/pp/article/view/547/679; http://dx.doi.org/10.7577/pp.547
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus
• Topic: Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
• Keywords: universities; field of higher education; layers of function; institutional form; institutional expansion/contraction; corps of university teachers; Sociology; Sociologi
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1893-1049