Continuing the interest of international postgraduate students in pursuing their degrees in the Nordic countries, Stefan Geens examines some of the unique features of the Swedish university system.
For bright international students, attending university in Sweden has never been easier: exchange programmes for undergraduates are widely available and graduate students can now choose from over 300 English-language masters programmes, ranging from bioinformatics to human rights law to space engineering. The result is that more non-Swedes than ever before are coming to Sweden to study.
During the 2002-2003 academic year, around 10,500 of 83,000 new enrolments at Swedish universities, or 12.5%, were by non-nationals, according to latest available figures by the National Agency for Higher Education; that’s almost double the number just five years ago. This trend is being encouraged both by the government and by universities themselves, because they consider an international student body to be an asset for all students.
For some students, the answer to that question is easy: “All of my dad’s relatives are Swedish and that is the heritage I associate most with,” says Katie Lundquist, who was an exchange student from Dartmouth College in the United States, studying engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology. “When I found out I could spend a term in Sweden, I jumped at the chance.” Others choose Sweden on account of its reputation for natural beauty, social welfare or a cosmopolitan culture. For many, however, the most compelling reason is the education itself.
The wide choice of English-language courses – aimed at both Swedes and non-Swedes – is perhaps the most obvious draw for students shopping the world for higher education. “I had rather a lot of choice in what I studied,” says Northern Ireland’s Andy Fugard, a masters student at Chalmers University and research assistant at the IT University in Göteborg (Gothenburg), on the west coast. As a result, “I was exposed to, and found fun things that I normally would not have considered interesting.”
One reason Andy had so many English-language options is that Swedish universities have a tradition of being responsive to student demand – and for many Swedes, all of whom speak fluent English, studying in English is a self-evident choice when preparing for an international career.
The enthusiastic adoption of English in Sweden as the lingua franca for many of its business and academic pursuits is one reason why the country continues to top global competitiveness surveys. It doesn't just make Swedes more competitive abroad – it makes non-Swedes like Andy more competitive in Sweden, and this feeds
a virtuous circle.
Of the 300 masters programmes available today, around 40 percent are in the natural sciences, technology or engineering – fields that have been the most thoroughly anglicised globally. Tina Fransson, a recent graduate from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), completed such a programme: the International Masters Programme in Water Resources Engineering at Linköping University (about 200 kilometres southwest of Stockholm). “It is one year of courses followed by a masters thesis,” she explains. “We have studied subjects such as waste water treatment, hydrology and ground water chemistry. The programme prepares the student for a future career involving water.”
Around 20 percent of programmes are in the area of business and economics, and it is one of these Pongpat from Thailand chose: the Masters Programme in Leadership and International Management at the University of Kalmar’s Baltic Business School (located in southern Sweden on the south-east coast). “In the class, we mainly study strategy, business intelligence, leadership and management, which also included team building and research
workshops,” Pongpat says. “There are 45 students in my class from 20 nationalities, but not only the students are international – also our lecturers, who are French, Italian, German, Thai and, of course, Swedish.”
Other masters programmes offer degrees in the social sciences, art and design, health and medicine, law, and the humanities.
Sweden has a history of academic excellence that stretches back to the 15th century, and the country is home to the Nobel Prize, the world's most prestigious academic distinction. But its universities don't have to rest on these laurels: contemporary factors support Sweden's reputation for quality in higher education. First, there is a commitment by the state to making sure the universities are well endowed. Of all OECD countries, Sweden invests the most funds per student in higher education: latest available figures show that total spending per student over the course of a typical Swedish university education amounts to nearly $70,000, versus an OECD average of $40,000.
The National Agency for Higher Education implements what is widely regarded to be one of the world's most stringent evaluation procedures. Some 300 assessors, many from abroad, continuously evaluate a total of 700 programmes at Sweden's 39 degree-awarding academic institutions. They have the power to strip a university of its entitlement to award degrees, which means that individual (departmental) deans are very proactive in their own quality assessments. The results, moreover, are published in English, making the process fully transparent.
In the fields of science and technology, Swedish universities collaborate closely with industry, an arrangement that began during the industrialisation of the economy in the 19th century. Many of Sweden's large companies were built around ideas developed by publicly funded research. Today, universities are the epicentres for many of Sweden’s technology clusters; Mobile Valley in Kista , a suburb of Stockholm, Telematics Valley in Göteborg, and Öresund IT, in the Öresund region – an area composed of eastern Denmark and southern Sweden, all feed off a fount of academic talent.
But this symbiosis works both ways – students get valuable real-world training and research projects focus on where the most promising growth lies. Publicly funded incubators, such as Netport Karlshamn in Blekinge, in the south-east, help graduate students turn their innovations into viable businesses.
Swedish universities employ a teaching methodology that is distinctly less hierarchical and more hands-on than in most other countries. The focus is less on note taking in lectures than on project-based learning and problem solving, as well as independent research that fosters initiative and critical thinking.
For Tina Fransson, this is something new and different, and a great learning experience: “There have been so many written reports and oral presentations, which was great because it prepared me for real life in the workplace,” she says. The informal atmosphere puts student-teacher interaction on a much more egalitarian footing, which for students means more chances to pick a teacher's brain. “I have talked quite a lot to teachers with whom I have similar interests,” says Andy Fugard.
The Swedish state fully funds university tuition (with the exception of a few private institutions) for all students, regardless of their provenance. This means that education is free for all those who are accepted into a programme. Non-Swedes have no recourse to student loans, but various organisations, including the Swedish Institute, provide limited, competitive scholarships to cover living costs.
To guarantee that a Swedish university education continues to remain relevant in this globalising world, the government in July 2005 formally proposed an overhaul of the system in the context of a Europe-wide academic standardization effort called The Bologna Process. Among the highlights of the proposed bill is a new two-year masters degree to complement the one-year degree. If the bill is approved, these changes will start going into effect from 2007 onwards.
The Swedish Institute maintains a website, www.studyinsweden.se, aimed at encouraging international students to study in Sweden. It contains a database of English-language programmes, information on application procedures, scholarships and visas, and the answers to many frequently asked questions. If you're interested in studying in Sweden, use this website to locate courses that interest you, find contact information, and download scholarship applications.
Copyright ©2005 the Swedish Institute. Reproduced with permission.