Anso 161 0115

ELITE STRATEGIES IN A UNIFIED SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION.
THE
CASE OF SWEDEN
Mikael Börjesson, Donald Broady
Presses Universitaires de France | « L'Année sociologique »
2016/1 Vol. 66 | pages 115 à 146

ISSN 0066-2399
ISBN 9782130733652
DOI 10.3917/anso.161.0115
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Elite Strategies in a Unified

System of Higher Education.
The Case of Sweden
Mikael Börjesson
Donald Broady
Résumé. – L’absence de filières d’excellence élitaire distingue la Suède de presque


tous les autres pays. Il n’y a, dans l’enseignement supérieur, quasi aucune institution
qui se distingue des autres par un recrutement d’étudiants d’origine sociale exception-
nellement élevée ou ayant des références scolaires brillantes. Aucun frais de scolarité
n’est perçu à quelque niveau que ce soit du système éducatif, et des bourses d’études
et des prêts sont alloués à tous les étudiants suédois – ce qui creuserait une ligne de
partage fondée sur l’économie. Pratiquement toutes les institutions d’enseignement
supérieur étant publiques, l’opposition entre privé et public est non pertinente. De
plus, aux niveaux inférieurs du système suédois il n’existe que très peu d’écoles ou
de voies institutionnelles où l’on puisse percevoir facilement la prééminence des
enfants des actuelles élites ou qui soient consacrées à la sélection et à la formation des
élites futures. Ainsi, pour comprendre le rôle de l’enseignement dans la reproduction
et la production des élites suédoises, n’est-il pas possible de différencier un secteur
spécifique d’institutions élitaires. Il faut, au contraire, prendre en compte l’ensemble
du système. Cet article propose d’analyser l’éducation de l’élite comme un sous-
espace de l’espace de l’enseignement supérieur suédois dans son entier, caracté-
risé par une distribution inégale de différents types de capitaux. Cette perspective
tient compte de la distinction entre élites et membres de la classe sociale supérieure,
aussi bien que des distinctions entre les différents types de capitaux – hérités et
acquis – qu’ils soient économiques, sociaux, culturels ou éducatifs. Nous tenons
pour centrale la distribution de ces capitaux entre hommes et femmes, puisque ces
dernières ont tendance à surclasser de plus en plus les premiers. Il est également
notable que dans un pays périphérique comme la Suède les investissements éducatifs
dans des ressources transnationales soient d’une importance cruciale et croissante,
tant pour les étudiants que pour les institutions. Une des principales conclusions
est que le système éducatif suédois est en cours de différenciation et n’est ainsi plus
autant une singularité par rapport au reste du monde.
Mots clés. – Analyse de correspondance ; Classes sociales ; Élites ; Enseignement

de l’élite ; Enseignement supérieur ; Champ de pouvoir ; Espace social.
L’Année sociologique, 2015, 65, n° 2, pp. 115-146

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116 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

Abstract – The absence of a clear-cut elite education sector distinguishes
Sweden from nearly all other countries. In higher education, almost no institutions
rise in their entirety above the rest when it comes to recruitment of students of
exceptional high social origin or superior scholarly credentials. Tuition fees are not
allowed at any level and study grants and loans are provided to all Swedish students,
undermining an economic driven divide of the system. Since virtually all higher
education institutions are public, the opposition between private and public is incon-
sequential. In addition, at lower levels of the Swedish system there exist very few
easily discernible schools or institutional tracks dominated by the offspring of current
elites or dedicated to the selection and formation of future elites. Thus, in order to
understand the role of education in the reproduction and production of Swedish
elites, it is not possible to distinguish a separate sector of elite institutions. Instead,
the entire system must be taken into account. This article proposes to analyse elite
education as a subspace within the whole space of Swedish higher education, defined
by the uneven distribution of various species of capital. This perspective allows for
the distinction between elites and members of the upper class as well as distinctions
between different species of capital – inherited and acquired – including economic,
social, cultural and educational. We find the distribution of capital among men and
women crucial since the latter tend to increasingly outperform the former. It is also

noteworthy that in a peripheral country such as Sweden educational investments
in transnational resources are of crucial and growing importance, for students as
well as for institutions. A main conclusion is that the Swedish educational system is
subjected to an on-going differentiation and thus represents less of an exception in
relation to the rest of the world.
Keywords. – Correspondence Analysis; Social Classes; Elites; Elite Education;

Higher Education; Field of Power; Social Space.
Introduction
In most parts of the world there are well-defined mechanisms

for elite education.1 Most obvious in many Western countries is the
existence of a sector of highly selective institutions. In the United
States and Great Britain most prestigious schools and universities
are private and charge high tuition fees, while in France the corre-
sponding grands lycées and grandes écoles most often are state-owned
and lay claim to select students on a predominantly meritocratic
basis. What these kinds of institutions have in common is that they
command a strong concentration of various species of capital, be
1. This article is written within the context of the research projects ‘Domestic
Arenas of Internationalization. Swedish Higher Education and International Students,
1945-2015’ funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), and Nordic Fields
of Higher Education. Structures and Transformations of Organization and Recruitment,
1985-2015 (NFHE), funded by NordForsk.
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Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 117
it scholarly, economic, cultural or social. Another visible mecha-

nism is the division into parallel subsystems, which begin to separate
pupils at an early age into socially differentiated tracks, for example
the traditional German Bildungswege. Yet another easily recognis-
able device within elite education systems are the special selection
processes – for example, through interviews, or the French concours –
that take into account not only former school achievements but also
desirable personality features, language skills and other capacities
predominantly found among students in possession of considerable
amounts of inherited cultural and social assets.2
Sweden represents an unusual case because such obvious mecha-
nisms are more or less absent. Very few schools or universities occupy
– in their entirety – generally recognised elevated positions. Almost
all higher education institutions are state-owned. Grades from lower
levels of the system are, nearly everywhere (among the exceptions
are formations in art, music, sports), the only instrument used in

the selection of students to upper secondary and to higher educa-
tion. Tuition fees are not allowed in primary or secondary schools
(whether private or not), nor (except for non-European students) at
university level.
Furthermore, compared to most other countries the organisa-
tion of the system is much more homogenous, which means that
few socially determined divisions can be easily discerned. Since
1977 nearly all post-secondary education has been incorporated into
högskolan that offers everything from traditional university studies to
vocational training. During the 1970s the upper secondary level also
underwent homogenisation: the previous division between neatly
separated tracks that recruited children from or targeted different
social classes was abolished giving way to one single institution,
gymnasieskolan, which from the early 1990s until recently gave,
at least formally, all graduates access to higher education. In the
early 1970s the eight-year unified comprehensive schooling for all
children, grundskolan, had already been implemented everywhere in
Sweden. That meant the end of the former division between folksko-
lan for the poor and läroverket for the more educated or affluent
classes. A political explanation of this organisational homogeneity
was the egalitarian discourse that prevailed during the long period
of social democratic hegemony. Until recently, not even right wing
2. In France this applies foremost to the private grandes écoles, especially in manage-
ment, which place greater emphasis on personal and social characteristics than the state
grandes écoles do (Allouch, 2013).
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spokespersons allowed themselves to call for or even acknowledge

the existence of such a thing as elite education.
In this article we propose some answers to the intriguing
question of how elite education – meaning both the formation
of the offspring of past and present elites as well as the formation of
future elites – has operated in a system lacking clear-cut institutional
vehicles for the reproduction and production of elites. We also ask
whether there is a movement towards a more overtly differentiated
system.
The last question is natural since on an organisational and policy
level the equity ideal has during recent decades been increasingly
challenged by new models and goals. In a first wave, in the late 1980s
and the early 1990s, efforts to increase and support marketisation and
decentralisation were launched at all levels of the educational system.
The state decentralised responsibility for the compulsory school and
the upper secondary school to the municipalities. A deregulation

facilitated the establishment of independent but state-funded schools
that were allowed to be for-profit – today in many cases owned by
venture capitalists. A new voucher system gave the pupils or parents
free choice of schools. For each pupil enrolled at the school, the
owner receives money directly from the state budget. In higher
education, the institutions were given more liberty to organise their
educational offerings, and financial support from the government
to the institutions became more closely related to the choices of
the students and their performance. In short, the market was made
the organisational principle, and the freedom of individual choice
became a prominent objective. Equality disappeared from the politi-
cal vocabulary.
In a second wave, from the beginning of the 2000s and onward,
internationalisation and excellence have been the guiding principles.
With the higher education reform in 2007, the whole system was
adopted to the Bologna model and its 3+2 year degree system with
the rationale of increasing international mobility and strengthening
Sweden’s position in the global knowledge economy competition.
A series of initiatives have also been launched to promote excel-
lence in the educational system. One such initiative has been to fund
larger “centres of excellence” research milieus, another to indicate
“strategic” research areas eligible for substantial financial support, a
third to support recruitment of excellent international scholars to
Swedish institutions. In addition, the “autonomy” reform in 2010
– which granted the boards of higher education institutions more
freedom to decide on their organisational structure and the positions
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for teaching and research – was part of the evolution of a less unified
system with more institutional diversity. Furthermore, multiple
attempts have been made to diversify the funding of higher educa-
tion institutions according to different performance indicators and
measures of quality.
These trends are well known from other Western countries.
What we have witnessed in Sweden is, thus, the “mainstreaming”
of a hitherto rather exceptional educational system. Below we will
investigate both the transformations within the system and its – in
fact surprisingly stable – general structure.
The Swedish educational system and its elitist dynamics
The space of higher education and the subspace of elite education

In a homogenous system such as Sweden’s, up until recently the

elites – or, in another theoretical perspective, primarily the cultural
fractions of the upper middle and upper class – had to exercise
control not over a limited number of exclusive institutions but over
the entire higher education system. This is a necessity since the
social and meritocratic divide operates within, rather than between,
institutions.
To account for this social fact we have chosen to define the space
of elite higher education simply as the uppermost compartments of
the entire higher education space. To be more precise, elite higher
education is the subspace (represented by a trapezoid in Figure 1)
characterised by the highest density of cultural capital as well as other
species of capital – economic, juridical, administrative, political,
scientific, artistic, etc. – that constitutes the Swedish field of power.
The space of Swedish higher education is constructed by
the use of correspondence analysis (CA) (Le Roux, Rouanet,
2004, pp. 23-74). On the basis of a dataset of the total population
(n = 264,000) of students (active half time or more) in higher educa-
tion in the autumn of 2006, a large table has been extracted with
the more than 600 educational programmes and courses at specific
educational institutions as rows (minimum 100 students by unit) and
the 64 categories of students’ social origin, which separates male
and female students (i.e., sons of nurses, daughters of lawyers) as the
columns. The structure of the space is defined by the proportion of
students in each of the categories that are enrolled at the different
educational institutions and programmes.
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Figure 1. The Swedish space of higher education

and the subspace of elite education, autumn 2006.
Correspondence Analysis, the plane of axes 1 and 2.
32 categories of social origin, sexes separated.

Data source: Statistics Sweden.
Active variables:
 Social origin. S = sons; D = daughters.
• Educational programmes/courses offered by higher education institution.
The sizes of the triangles and circles are proportional to the number of students
in a particular category.
As shown in Figure 1, the entire space of higher education

exhibits a triangular shape. Let us first consider the distribution
of social origin and gender. At the top of the triangle, where the
gender differentiation is not very pronounced, we find the students
who possess large amounts of both inherited and acquired cultural
and educational capital. At the wide base at the bottom, the gender
differences are remarkable with a concentration of male students
from the working class to the right and of women from the same
class to the lower left.
Regarding the distribution of institutions the traditional univer-
sities of Uppsala and Lund, the larger universities of Stockholm and
Gothenburg, and some reputable specialised institutions such as
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the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), the Stockholm School

of Economics and the Royal Institute of Art are found at the top
of the space, where there is a concentration of students with vast
amounts of highly recognised resources of various kind. In contrast,
the recently established universities and regional university colleges,
characterised by a limited and less prestigious educational offer-
ing, more modest resources for research and the lack of “tradition,”
are situated in the lower region of the space, populated by students
originating from lower social classes. Most of these colleges only
became higher education institutions after 1977.
Finally, considering the distribution of study programmes,
longer programmes in, for example, medicine, law and political
science are positioned in the upper compartments of the space.
Here, there are many applicants per position. Only those with very
high grades from the upper secondary level or eminent results in
the national aptitude test are admitted. At the base lie programmes

for the training of preschool and primary school teachers, and
health and social care workers. The gender binary along this first
axis is due to differences in the choice of study domain. Shorter
technology programmes comprise the “male” pole (lower right),
and training in teaching, nursing, and social care the “female” pole
(lower left). Here the scholastic thresholds for admission are gener-
ally very low.
Thus, social differentiation is closely related to the meritocratic,
whereby those endowed with the highest levels of inherited and
acquired educational capital tend to make the most distinguished
educational investments. However, for analytical reasons we believe
that it is important to separate social and meritocratic resources.
How to define elite education and elites?

It seems necessary to differentiate between at least two defini-
tions of “elite education.”3
3. For the sake of simplicity we refrain in this article from employing a third defi-
nition, the functional one, which we have made use of elsewhere, such as in an analysis
of the elite segment of upper secondary education in Sweden (Börjesson et al., 2016).
Elite educational institutions in the functional sense are sites for the formation of the
elites of tomorrow, that is, those who in the future will occupy dominant positions
in different fields. This function is very clear in the case of institutions at the apex of
particular educational subspaces, such as the Stockholm School of Economics within
the economic field or the Royal Institute of Art for fine arts careers. In this functional
sense, elite education also operates on the lower tiers of the educational system, where
certain high-profile schools and programmes prepare students for entry into sought-
after exclusive programmes on higher levels. Internationally famous examples are
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According to a meritocratic definition, elite education takes place

in institutions or programmes characterised by highly selective
recruitment of students based on scholastic merit. Typically, only
those with the highest grades from underlying levels of the educa-
tional system are admitted. Merits other than scholarly achievements
are valid only in special cases, for example when applying to institu-
tions specialising in art or sports.
The most significant effect of meritocratic selection is probably
its impact on the uniformity of scholastic goals. In meritocratic elite
institutions, high ambitions, excellent performance and sustained
effort are considered highly desirable and frequently become the
norm due to the combined influences of staff and pressure from
peers.
A second definition of elite education is a social one. In this
perspective, elite schools or programmes are considered those that
contribute to the intra-generational reproduction of the current

dominant groups by educating and training their offspring.
When discussing dominant groups, it is important however to
differentiate between the reproduction of elites and of the upper
class (Baltzell, 1995 [1958], pp. 6-7). By “elites,” we simply mean
groups that occupy dominant (formal and informal) positions
within the overall field of power or within different fields such
as the economic, the political, the academic or the artistic field.
An individual belongs to the elite based on his or her individual
position and merit. For elite groups it is crucial to reproduce and
strengthen their specific species of capital (political capital within the
political elite, and so on). The upper class, by contrast, is defined in
relation to the social space, i.e. the class structure, and has no need
to reproduce a certain species of capital (political, artistic, etc.) but
simply to retain or strengthen a dominant position within the social
space.4
In Western societies, the most important division within the
upper or upper middle class tends to be the one that separates
those who are wealthier in terms of economic capital (the finan-
cial and industrial bourgeoisie) from those who are relatively more
American prep schools (Cookson, Persell, 1985), British public schools (Sutton Trust,
2008; Williams, Filippakou, 2010), and French classes préparatoires (Bourdieu, 1989). In
Sweden such preparatory schools hardly exist outside the art school sector.
4. For the upper class, the primary entity is not the individual itself but rather the
extended family that may employ various means and strategies to safeguard its position,
making use of various species of capital in doing so. Of course, there are relationships
between the elites and the upper class. Upper class families tend to spring from individuals
who have acquired elite positions that are then reproduced over time.
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dependent on cultural and educational capital for their position

and reproduction (scholars, artists, intellectuals, etc.). Groups in the
middle (senior civil servants, engineers, professionals such as lawyers
and physicians) are characterised by a more balanced distribution
of resources. (Bourdieu, 1979, pp. 139-144) This division found in
France forty years ago is also applicable to Swedish society as shown
by Andreas Melldahl and Mikael Börjesson (2015) for the whole
population in 1990 and by Andreas Melldahl (2015) for those aged
40 in the same year.
A homologous division between the trajectories of the children
from families rich in cultural capital and those rich in economic
capital was visible within the educational system. Such divisions
were, though, found rather within than between institutions. The
exceptions, for example clear-cut institutions for the economic elite,
are very few, among which the best known are a couple of board-
ing schools that recruit children from affluent families and from

the nobility (Sandgren, 2015). For centuries the nobility have also
educated their offspring through hiring tutors and arranging educa-
tional travel, such as the grand tour in Europe. Over time, however, the
nobility have become more dependent on the educational system to
reproduce their social position. The royal family is no exception and
has begun to make more frequent, albeit not particularly ambitious,
use of the elite segment of the educational system for educating its
younger members. In the eyes of the public, the enrolment of a royal
prince or princess is perhaps the most conspicuous sign of a posh
elite school.
These two definitions of elite education are intertwined. Thus,
programmes that are highly selective in terms of scholastic merit
tend to recruit pupils or students from families belonging to social
elites and/or the upper class. For analytical purposes, though, it is
useful to maintain the distinction between elite education in the
meritocratic sense and in the social sense, as will be illustrated in
the following.
Social and meritocratic elite higher education

To sum up: the analysis of the space of higher education (Figure 1
above) gave a rough characterisation of Swedish elite higher educa-
tion as the subspace with the highest density of cultural capital (both
acquired and inherited) as well as a strong concentration of other
species of capital that constitute the Swedish field of power. This
subspace of elite higher education is dominated by a few presti
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gious longer professional programmes, especially in medicine and

engineering, located within a very narrow range of institutions,
predominantly at the oldest universities and specialised professional
universities, for example, in medicine and engineering, mostly
situated in Stockholm and the surrounding region. To enable analy-
ses that are more precise in the previous section we proposed two
definitions of elite education, the social and the meritocratic, which
we will now apply in an analysis of the recruitment profile of all
higher education study programmes and courses with more than
100 enrolled students in the autumn of 2006.
The total number of such programmes and courses amounted
to 759. Among those, we singled out social elite recruitment of
students by reducing the dataset using two variable values: upper
middle to upper class social origins and/or highly educated
parents. We defined meritocratic elite recruitment by ranking values
of two additional variables related to the students’ educational

capital: grades from upper secondary school and/or results on the
Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test (SweSAT). We then selected
56 programmes and courses (listed in Table 1 in the Appendix)
that ranked among the top 30 according to one or more of these
four variables. Of these 56 elite programmes and courses, 22 were
situated in the Stockholm–Uppsala region. In terms of the distri-
bution between the institutions, 32 programmes (or courses) were
found at the traditional old universities in Uppsala and Lund, 14 at
newer specialised (in medicine, engineering, economics) univer-
sities, 9 at the two newer large universities in Stockholm and
Gothenburg, recognised as universities in the twentieth century, and
only 1 at a recently established medium-sized university, formerly
a university college. Furthermore, there were 38 long professional
programmes. There was a clear dominance of engineering (22) and
social sciences including law, political science and psychology (17).
Medicine was overrepresented as well (9), while the humanities (5),
natural sciences5 (2) and other faculties6 (0) were underrepresented
compared to their share of the total student population. Measured
in this way, the most distinct elite profiles are found within a
handful of professional programmes, namely those in medicine,
psychology, and engineering (especially in industrial economics,
physics, and architecture).
5. Including veterinary science.

6. Two programmes in law are included in the social sciences. There are no pro-
grammes in theology or education.
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Our four indicator variables can be used to further clarify the

differences within the elite segment of programmes and courses.
The most exclusive group is formed by the ten programmes that
rank in the top 30 on all four variables. In this top-ten group no
less than six positions are occupied by programmes in medicine at
different universities. In fact, these constitute all such programmes
in Sweden, which further underlines how medicine is the major
elite programme in Sweden. This group also includes the economic
programme at the Stockholm School of Economics, the engineer-
ing programme in physics at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of
Technology and at Chalmers in Göteborg, as well as the politi-
cal science programme at Uppsala University. It is noteworthy that
while business studies is one of the most popular areas in Swedish
higher education, the programme at the Stockholm School of
Economics stands out as the undisputed pinnacle within a vast
domain of not very highly-ranked institutions. Among engineering

programmes at the Royal Institute of Technology and Chalmers, the
ones in physics and in industrial economics rise above the rest. The
former is the most general and theoretical, with a strong emphasis
on mathematics, the latter prepares for dominant positions within
the economic field.
Our analysis of the recruitment profiles of different programmes
illustrates that although our two main elite criteria – the social and the
meritocratic – overlap they do not necessarily coincide. Programmes
in medicine and some engineering programmes stand out because
of their large share of students from affluent, and especially from
highly educated, families. When meritocratic criteria were applied,
there was greater dispersal of top achievers among different study
programmes. There were also differences between our two indica-
tors – grades from upper secondary and results on the SweSAT – of
meritocratic assets. The highest school grades were found among
students in medicine as well as in the prestigious engineering
programmes in industrial economics and physics, while there were
larger proportions of students with high scores on the SweSAT in
social science programmes, especially psychology. The differences
were less marked between the two indicators of elite social origin,
that is between the students with social origins in the upper middle
or upper class on the one hand and highly educated parents on the
other.
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The expansion of higher education and its effects
The expansion and the elites

So far, we have considered the space of higher education at a
certain point in time, the year of 2006. Although the general struc-
ture has remained remarkably stable for decades, as shown in other
analyses,7 there have been transformations among which the most
dramatic – just as in other countries – is the tremendous growth in
the numbers of students.8
The number of registered students increased from 17,000 in
1950 to 431,000 in 2011 – a 2,500 per cent increase (see Figure 2).
However, this rise has not been continuous. Two major phases of
rapid expansion can be identified, in the 1960s and in the 1990s,
driven by different logics. The 1960s expansion resulted mainly from
the extensive growth of the youth population in combination with
a comprehensive educational policy and the introduction of favour-

able study grants and loans to all students, while the 1990s expan-
sion coincided with a decline in the youth population, an economic
recession and a political strategy to utilise higher education as a
means to reduce rising unemployment rates.
Expansion can be measured by the share of an age cohort enter-
ing higher education (Melldahl, 2015, p. 59). This share increased
steadily over the period from the 1940s to 1970s (from just above
5 per cent for those born in the 1920s to well over 25 per cent for
those born in the mid-1950s), followed by a stagnation during the
1980s (at just over 25 per cent among those born 1955-1965) and
again a rapid increase in the 1990s (from 25 to over 40 per cent in
only one decade for those born 1965-1975). One important aspect
of the growth of higher education is the increasing number of
female students during both phases of the expansion. The propor-
tion of women exceeded the proportion of men in the late 1970s
– partly as a result of the incorporation of preschool and primary
teacher training colleges, nursing schools and other female-
dominated programmes into the higher education system in 1977 –
and has increased over time. We will return to this development
below.
7. Cf. Broady, Palme, 1992, and later studies on the spaces of upper secondary and
higher education in Sweden.
8. This section summarises results presented in Börjesson et al., 2014.
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Figure 2. Number of Registered Students

in Swedish Higher Education, 1950-2011.

Sources: Figures for 1950 to 1976: Statistiska centralbyrån: Statistisk årsbok,
the 1959-1979 editions; figures for 1977 to 2011, SCB www.scb.se.
By considering the expansion in the 1990s in more detail,

we are able to determine its bearing on the elite segment. First,
the main growth in student numbers did not occur at traditional
universities and prestigious specialised institutions but at university
colleges.9 While the universities accounted for more than 60 per cent
of students in 1977, by 2009 this share had decreased to just above
40 per cent. During the same period, registered students at univer-
sity colleges increased from 15 per cent to over 30 per cent of the
total student population. This share amounts to well over 40 per cent
if the university colleges granted university status during the period
are included. In other words, the institutions and programmes that
accommodated the most elite-oriented students shrank in relative
size, and thus became even more exclusive.
9. The university colleges (högskolor) were established after the higher education
reform in 1977, mainly through upgrading and merging teacher training colleges and
health care institutes. Until recently, the main dividing line between universities and uni-
versity colleges was that the former, unlike the latter, were entitled to award third-cycle
qualifications and thus deliver doctorate degrees and receive direct government funding
for research. Today, the differences have been reduced since the university colleges are
now able to apply for entitlement to offer third cycle programmes in certain disciplinary
domains. To complicate the picture further, almost all university colleges in Sweden prefer
to use the term “university” in the English translation of their names although they are not
entitled to this designation according to the Swedish administrative vocabulary.
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Second, the expansion was also driven by a restructuring of study

programmes, characterised by the expansion of general programmes
and courses, at the expense of professional programmes, which
thereby became even more selective in relative terms.
Third, at the level of the individual programmes, the most
prestigious programmes grew more slowly than other programmes.
This is, for instance, apparent in the most exclusive programmes
in art (Börjesson, 2012). While the entire art education sector
increased from 2,000 students by the mid-1980s to 16,000 by
2009, professional programmes remained generally stable at around
2,000 students from 1993 to 2006. One telling example of the stabi
lity of the most sought-after programmes is the five-year programme
in fine arts at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, which
had around 130-140 students during the 1990s and the 2000s, a
level only slightly higher than the 120 students in the preceding
decade. In fact, the selectiveness of this programme has grown since

the 1980s as the number of applicants for the 25 positions offered
annually has increased from 600 to 900. At the opposite pole in
the subfield of elite higher education space, where economics and
business dominate, the Stockholm School of Economics has kept the
size of its flagship programme in economics relatively constant at just
over 1,000 students with a yearly intake of around 300 students from
1977 to 2009. During this period, registered students in business
studies in Sweden have increased in number from 15,000 to 35,000,
and in economics from 2,000 to 7,000. In other words, the relative
exclusiveness of the Stockholm School of Economics has increased
steadily with the expansion of higher education during the last two
decades.
To summarise, Swedish higher education underwent phases of
rapid expansion in the 1960s and in the 1990s, accompanied by
profound changes in its functions. The initial quantitative dominance
of the universities has disappeared because of the creation and expan-
sion of the university colleges. In addition, in the latest phase of
expansion, from the 1990s onward, the most prestigious programmes
have grown more slowly – or not at all – compared to the rest of
the higher education system, thus attaining even more exclusive
positions in the overall space of higher education.
Increasing numbers of women enrolled

The reform in 1977, when almost all short post-secondary
programmes were incorporated into the new unified higher education
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organisation högskolan, caused an instant shift in the gender balance.

Overnight, the male majority in the student population was replaced
by a female majority. This change was mainly due to a large increase
of women in the less prestigious sector of the system, dominated by
shorter vocational programmes in nursing, social care and education.
The gender composition of the elite segment was not immediately
affected by the reform and remained clearly male-dominated.
This has now changed drastically. During the period from the
reform in 1977 until 2008 all longer professional programmes in
higher education saw their share of female students rise and the
proportion of men fall (Lidegran et al., 2015).10 Many programmes,
such as those in medicine, law and architecture, were transformed
from clearly male-dominated in 1977 to female-dominated by 2008
with a sharp turning point in the early 1990s. A few programmes,
such as those in psychology and pharmacy, which in 1977 already
enrolled slightly more women than men, have over the years become

more heavily dominated by women. Exceptions were engineering
programmes that were strongly male-dominated in 1977 – some
with more than 90 per cent male students – and still at the end of the
period clearly characterised by larger proportions of men, although
most of them exhibited a slight increase in female students. This rise
has been most pronounced in the least male-dominated engineer-
ing programme, that in chemistry, which since 1998 has actually
maintained a constant female majority. Also the recruitment to the
engineering programme in industrial economics has changed, albeit
less sharply, from 90 per cent male students to 70 per cent.
The inflow of women is apparent in almost all regions of the
higher education space. That women massively entered the lower
left quadrant of the space, where shorter vocational programmes in
nursing, social care and education are positioned, is partly a result of
demands for new qualifications in the sections of the labour market
in which working class and lower middle class women predomi-
nate. Preschools now prefer to employ preschool teachers, trained
at universities and university colleges, instead of childcare assistants
with only upper secondary education, and nurses with at least three
years of higher education studies are replacing nursing assistants. A
similar upgrade is not as apparent for male working class and lower
middle class jobs.
10. This change at all levels of the educational system was at that time a rather new
phenomena observable in many countries; cf. e.g. Baudelot, Establet, 1992.
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The most noticeable changes in gender ratios have taken place

within the elite segment of the higher education space. This trans-
formation needs to be explained by other factors than changes in
the labour market, since here women and men are oriented towards
similar job positions. One probable factor is higher aspirations
among women, aspirations that in turn beg for further explanation.
In combination with their increasingly higher credentials from upper
secondary school, as noted below, women have started to gradually
overtake men in the most prestigious sector of the higher educa-
tional system.
Admission and grade inflation

The expansion of the higher education system not only implies
more students. In addition, the number of applicants to the most
sought-after programmes has increased, implying sharpened compe-
tition for the elite positions within the system. This makes the

question of admissions crucial in order to understand the entire
space of Swedish higher education.
As noted above, in the Swedish higher education system there
are two main criteria for the selection: grades from upper second-
ary school and scores on the SweSAT. The latter selection criterion
follows a strict normalisation procedure: points on the test are trans-
formed into a score, with consistently similar proportions of indivi
duals in each category. By contrast, the former criterion, i.e. grades
from upper secondary, has since 1997 followed another logic, that
of an absolute and goal-related system.11 This implies that pupils are
evaluated according to their level of performance. If they are judged
to have performed in accordance with the highest goals formulated
in the syllabus they can, at least in theory, all receive the highest
grade. Such a system allows for more fluctuation over time. There is
also a clear tendency toward grade inflation, with a sharp increase in
the number of students with higher grades. An obvious explanation
for the generalisation of this process is the on-going marketisation
of the system: delivering high grades has become a weapon used by
schools in the competition to attract pupils and to please parents.12
11. The former grading system was relative, which meant that the pupils were
graded on their performance in relation to all other pupils in their cohort on a national
scale.
12. For macro analyses of the relation between grades and marketisation, see
Vlachos, 2010.
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The figure below shows grade inflation from 1997 to 2003.

The mean grade point average increased from above 12.5 (out of
20.0) to 14.0 in only six years. Thereafter, it remained rather stable,
at just above 14.0. Girls outperformed boys, an advantage that has
remained stable at more than 1.0 over the years. Moreover, the gap
between girls and boys actually increased in some years, reaching a
difference of 1.4 points in 2008.
Figure 3. Mean grade point average

in upper secondary school by gender, 1997-2008.

Source: Statistics from Statistics Sweden.
Furthermore, grade inflation is more pronounced at the very

top of the distribution, which is crucial for access to elite higher
education institutions. From 1997 to 2003, the proportion of
upper secondary pupils with an average grade of more than 19.0
increased from below 1 per cent to 5 per cent. During the same
seven-year period, those who achieved the absolutely highest
grade, 20.0, rose from 19 pupils to 340 pupils, a more than tenfold
increase. This number continued to rise, reaching 699 pupils in
2008.13 This is why programmes in medicine introduced a lottery
13. The increasing numbers of top-scorers can also be related to the marketisation

of the educational system, see Vlachos, 2010, pp. 49-51.
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system to enable selection among the growing number of appli-

cants with maximum grades.
Another side of the huge inflation in grades is the altering
conditions for different age cohorts. Since demand exceeds supply
when it comes to elite higher education, there is constantly a large
pool of applicants of different ages (in Swedish higher education,
students tend to be older than in many other countries). The grade
inflation in the late 1990s has in effect decreased the chances of
those that graduated after the introduction of the new grade system
compared to those that graduated in the old system in the middle of
the 1990s. The graduates of the late 1990s also fared worse than later
cohorts, graduating in the beginning of the 2000s, who benefitted
from rising grade averages. Such differences between cohorts were
subject to severe criticism (Linder, 2011). What is at stake here is the
basic legitimacy of the educational system. To be legitimate it must
appear to be fair for all individuals, implying in this case that a “pass

with distinction” must be acknowledged as having the same value
across generations. (Skolverket, 2012)
Currently, now that the grade inflation on a general level has
evened out, a new problem has arisen: large differences between
schools. Some schools grant more than half of their pupils higher
grades than they are entitled to with regard to their pupils’ scores
on the national tests. Many of this category of schools that are
“generous” with their grades are private and owned by venture
capitalists. This has led to fierce criticism of the private school sector.
Another consequence is that many pupils graduating from grade
nine and their parents have to choose between applying either to a
less demanding private upper secondary school that is known for its
“boosted grades”, i.e. high grades in relation to actual performance,
or to a school – often a well-established municipal one – with a more
demanding teaching staff and a more academically-oriented study
environment. Although applying to the latter kind of school involves
the risk of lower grades, you might on the other hand expect the
kind of environment and personal development cherished by cultur-
ally rich families and a solid scholarly foundation for higher studies.
A further change in the upper section of the grade distribu-
tion is that girls have increasingly outperformed boys. During the
period from 1987 to 1993, girls constituted 56–58 per cent of the
students with grade point averages of over 18.99 in upper second-
ary school, while boys accounted for 42–44 per cent. Around 1995,
girls had increased their share of this group to approximately 60 per
cent, and from 2003 to over 65 per cent. This roughly implies that
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since 2003, two out of every three high achievers have been girls.
In addition, because the proportion of students with the highest
grades has increased over time, the absolute number of girls with
high grades has increased further. This phenomenon is reinforced by
the fact that the proportion of female pupils has also grown within
the category discussed below. Girls increased their share of pupils
with a grade between 17.0 and 18.9, from below 60 per cent to
over 65 per cent. This category also grew over time, from 5 per cent
to almost 15 per cent. In the current discourse the predominant
interpretation of this trend is not that it is a result of discrimination
against boys; the reason is simply that girls perform better in school
and are rewarded fairly for doing so (Hinnerich et al., 2010).
The impact of increasing national and international

competition

The competition between study programmes
Among the important transformations in Swedish elite educa-
tion is the sharpened competition between study programmes.
Many cases are found within the engineering sciences, where
the fiercest struggles are fought at the level of programmes and fields
of study rather than between institutions. During the last decade
there has been a tremendous growth of computer sciences at the
expense of more traditional areas such as mechanics and construc-
tion (Börjesson et al., 2014). In addition, industrial economics
– commonly known as “the managing director programme” – has
established itself as a sought-after programme in the intersection of
economics and engineering, and thus as a competitor to both the
Stockholm School of Economics and the traditional elite engineer-
ing programme, physics. We are obviously in the midst of an impor-
tant shift away from pure engineering as a previously crucial road to
elite positions within the Swedish field of economic power – while
in many countries a background in law or economics has been the
norm for top managers in the private sector, many Swedish compa-
nies have until recent decades been led by engineers (Jordansson,
2006, pp. 145-146).
In the wake of the expansion of the system, pretenders have
emerged in certain domains formerly dominated by one single
school or programme. Engineering is one case where the prestigious
Royal Institute of Technology and Chalmers have faced competition
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and had to cope with the fact that some of their programmes are
no longer top-ranked. Another even clearer case is the subspace of
education in fine arts. Until the 1990s, the Royal Institute of Art
exercised total domination (Gustavsson et al., 2012), which thereafter
has been challenged by formerly subordinate as well as newly estab-
lished art schools, which in different ways try to position themselves
in relation to both the leader and other arrivistes. Thus, the earlier
rather one-dimensional educational space in fine arts has in only one
decade turned into a veritably competition field.
Internationalisation of higher education

Another crucial factor that challenges the hitherto normal elite
reproduction mechanisms is the increasing importance of transna-
tional investments. Such investments have always played a significant
role for the higher echelons of society but now, after the dramatic rise
in the numbers of Swedes studying abroad in the 1990s, a widened

social recruitment base has emerged.
This does not, however, imply any drastic changes in the relations
and distances between social groups. There is substantial evidence
that the groups well supplied with important species of capital are
those that have gained most from this development. They possess
the resources (educational, economic, cultural and linguistic) and the
international experiences that truly enable them to compete on an
international or global level. At the same time we notice intensified
struggles where the relative value of international versus national
investments is at stake. It is not always that the international trumps
the national. Quite the contrary, the formation of international elites
presupposes a strong national basis and becomes a shaky project if
investments at home are forsaken. As a rule, an elevated position
within the national space – which goes for educational institutions
as well as for individual students or professionals – is a requirement
for advancement within international fields – for example in the
quest to profit from illustrious international exchange programmes
between elite sites of learning (Börjesson, 2005). In a rather periph-
eral country such as Sweden it seems probable that investments in
both domestic and international arenas will become even more of a
royal road to elite positions.
A more complex landscape of elite higher education is taking
shape as a result of both the increasing internationalisation – most
visible and of greatest consequence in the formation of the elites –
and the expansion of the domestic system that has given rise to
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more institutions and new programmes and fields of study. This

landscape functions at two levels, one national and one international
or global, and both are hierarchised and structured. At the global
level we can (following Marginson, 2006) distinguish between a
structure of nations, where Anglo-Saxon countries dominate, and
a structure of universities manifested in global rankings that singles
out American and British universities as world leaders. A university
holds at the same time a position in the national and the global
field. This implies that for American universities the differentia-
tion between the national level and the global level tends to be
compressed: the American hierarchy determines the global hierar-
chy. In more peripheral countries, such as Sweden, a common
opinion is that the growing internationalisation of higher education
involves downplaying the national system in favour of transnational
(EU or Bologna) or even global (USA) models. However, in order
to understand the formation of elites we should take into account

that this interplay between the national and the transnational or
global might in fact strengthen the positions of highly ranked insti-
tutions within the domestic space, and thus the persistence of social
dominance in the national structure. There is an urgent need for
careful comparative research on the relations between the develop-
ment on the national and the transnational or global level, and the
interdependence of the two levels for the formation of national,
transnational and global elites.
Increasing competition between social groups

Much evidence suggests that the competition in the field of
higher education in Sweden has become fiercer. We have witnessed
a vast expansion of the system that has had several effects. The higher
education landscape has become more complex: new institutions
have been established, new programmes and fields of study have
emerged, and new forms of instruction, such as on-line courses
have appeared. The expansion has also fundamentally changed the
value of higher education, from an exclusive good to something that
is largely diffused, which means a continuous devaluation of grades
and exams, for example for the individuals’ chances in the quest for
social positions and economic returns (Melldahl 2015). The massive
expansion of women in higher education has also led to a sharper
competition for the most sought after programmes. In addition, the
internationalisation of the higher education system has even further
contributed to the differentiation and to raised stakes. All this has
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had important consequences for social classes, class fractions and

groups in Sweden.
Because of the homogeneity of the Swedish system since the
1970s, the upper middle class, the upper class and the elites have
suffered from the scarcity of obvious routes for their own offspring
and for new recruits, which has deprived them of the possibility
– a natural one for equivalent groups in most countries – of simply
entrusting the next generation of chosen ones to certain schools
that serve as guarantors of a successful future. For their social repro-
duction they were themselves forced to provide their children (and
new recruits from other social strata) with more or less individual
trajectories through the system, as well as with extensive extra-
curricular activities including everything from the cultivation of
desirable manners and the company of acceptable friends to sojourns
abroad and internships. Today because of the differentiation more of
these needs are satisfied by certain powerful schools.

For the higher social classes, general educational investments
have become on the one hand necessary, and on the other hand
not sufficient. Since the system is primarily meritocratic, grades
are crucial for educational success. Upper middle class and upper
class families invest heavily in providing the best opportunities for
their children to acquire good grades. Once these good grades are
obtained, they need to be used wisely. To cite a Swedish study on
this very question,
It may seem paradoxical that those individuals who are able to choose
virtually any programme they please – that is to say the children of the educational
elite – turn out to make their selection from a very limited set of programmes, a
pattern which holds true especially for the sons. […] This is not as paradoxical
as it seems. It is only logical that the more concentrated the educational capital,
the more attractive, and consequently more valuable, it is. (Lidegran, 2009,
p. 249).
Given the importance of educational capital for those most
dependent upon it – that is the cultural fractions of the upper middle
class and the upper class – some recent transformations mean altered
conditions for the use of the educational system when it comes to
social reproduction. The more recent grade inflation at the upper
secondary level threatens the meritocratic mechanisms on which
these groups have relied, since it both creates different conditions
for different age cohorts and offers different chances that depend on
the school attended and not solely on performance. In addition, the
massive inflow of women has sharpened the competition for positions
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in elite programmes and institutions. The number of positions at

the top of the educational hierarchy has not increased, as the most
exclusive programmes have been careful to preserve their numerus
clausus while the rest of the system expanded. Their elite qualities
have been augmented and the competition for access has sharp-
ened, between men and women in general but also more precisely
between men and women with specific social backgrounds. Another
visible expression of the escalating competition at this high societal
level is the increasingly common phenomenon of double degrees,
or the addition of another elite programme to an already very selec-
tive programme. One of the most sought after combinations is a
degree from both a prestigious engineering programme, such as
physics or industrial economics, and a programme in economics at
the Stockholm School of Economics.
The transnational educational strategies of the various social
groups follow a similar logic. Members of the social elite have

the most to gain from internationalisation and, at the same time,
have the largest share of resources necessary for successful educa-
tion across national boundaries. These families possess cultural
capital, economic resources and international experience. The
parents have often worked abroad, or in some cases been educated
abroad, master several foreign languages and have travelled widely.
In other words, internationality is an integral part of the upbring-
ing of these students. This has considerable significance. Higher
studies overseas are regarded in these social groups as stages in a
longer process, where timely choices determine later possibili-
ties. Language is an important factor, especially when it comes to
non-English speaking countries. Having spent holidays in France,
studied French at secondary school and perhaps worked as an au
pair in France, makes it much easier to gain entry to higher educa-
tion in France. However, the importance of economic resources
should not be underestimated either. Although many economic
impediments have been removed in Sweden as a result of the provi-
sion of general student aid also for studies abroad, other conditions
prevail. In the United States, for example, tuition fees are high,
which means that for those who study for a long period at an
elite university, especially in big cities, the economic investment
might amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Albeit very
generous when compared to other countries, financial support for
students from the Swedish state, which includes aid for studying
abroad, would here be grossly inadequate, which leads to inequali-
ties linked to family resources.
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The internationalisation of higher education not only concerns

the upper social classes. In many respects, globalisation is about
changing scales. What was previously reserved for a small elite has
now become “democratised,” more widely available and accessi-
ble. When internationalisation moves into the national educational
system, this might challenge the privileges of certain groups within
the higher social classes and elites.
However, these new possibilities do not fundamentally change
the relations of dominance. When a system expands, those who
already occupy a dominant position quickly realise the need to
acquire more capital. A parallel can be drawn with the expansion
of higher education in Sweden. The fact that new groups entered
the university world did not necessarily mean the weakening of
the dominance of the former elite groups. On the contrary, as new
groups now have access to higher education, internationalisation
provides a distinctive advantage and creates sharp internal differences

within the Swedish system. Even a degree from Stockholm School
of Economics is not sufficient. Overseas studies serve as an important
complement. Because considerably more criteria are involved in the
selection for studies abroad than for education at home, and because
fewer are offered the opportunity, the acquisition of these sought-
after exchange positions is a rather precise indicator of the (indivi
dual student’s as well as Swedish educational institution’s) possession
of school-related and social capital.
Conclusion
Of course, in spite of the scarcity of obvious elite education

institutions in Sweden, there were ways for the elites, and the
upper middle and upper classes, to educate their own offspring
as well as new recruits from lower social strata. Their strategies
have, though, been different from those of their counterparts in
most countries. Because of the homogenisation of the Swedish
educational system, which culminated in the 1970s, they could
not rely on certain selective schools or universities. Instead, they
were forced to hunt for more or less individual routes through the
educational institutions – or outside the institutions, for example
by a rigorous management of their children’s leisure time or by
sending them abroad.
This homogeneity began to dissolve from the early 1990s and
onwards. The far-reaching deregulation and marketisation especially
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on the upper secondary level offered new opportunities for differ-

ent higher class fractions and different elites to satisfy their specific
reproduction needs. It is an open question whether this on-going
diversification will cleave the system or not. In many respects
the homogeneity persists. Tuition fees are not yet allowed at any
level. All active students in higher education are granted means to
cover their living expenses. The admission system is predominantly
meritocratic: the access to upper secondary level is determined by
school grades and to higher education by either grades from upper
secondary level or the national aptitude test.
Thus, for the higher classes and the elites there is no way
around substantial investments in education. For several reasons the
competition has sharpened. The elite character of most sought-
after programmes has been reinforced since these have succeeded
in limiting the number of students while the rest of the system has
expanded. The massive inflow of women in all kinds of elite educa-

tion has made the competition even harsher. The struggles are also
influenced by the on-going internationalisation that calls for new
kinds of investments.
The changes in educational strategies have – together with new
policies, reforms, and organisational measures that could be summed
up under the label “marketisation” – caused certain dislocations. The
natural science programme at the secondary level and the programme
in medicine in higher education have become even more exclusive
in their recruitment and represent even more than before Sweden’s
prime examples of elite education.
More generally, since the 1990s the existing dominating class
fractions and elites have strengthened their positions and their
dominance over the educational system. If we look at species of
capital instead of social groups, the development might be described
as one in which various kinds of recognised resources have been
concentrated even more to a set of programmes and institutions that
increasingly deserve the epithet “elite”. The Swedish educational
system seems to be evolving into a more normal one.
Mikael Börjesson
Donald Broady
Sociology of Education and Culture,
Uppsala University
donald.broady@soc.uu.se
mikael.borjesson@edu.uu.se
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Vlachos J., 2010, Betygets värde. En analys av hur konkurrens påverkar
betygssättningen vid svenska skolor. Uppdragsforskningsrapport, 6,
Stockholm, Konkurrensverket.
Williams G., Filippakou O., 2010, « Higher education and UK elite
formation in the twentieth century », Higher Education, 59,
pp. 1-20.
page 142 / 256
Appendix
Table 1. Elite education in Swedish higher education, autumn 2006.
Four criteria. Ranked by number of total top-30-positions and highest share of upper middle class origin.
National
Sthlm Upper Highly- Total
University
Uppsala N Grad-es middle edu- Top
Aptitude
Region class cated 30-rank
Test
Institution Type Field Type
Faculty Share Rank Share Rank Share Rank Share Rank
of Institution of study of education
Karolinska Spec. Medicine Medicine Long x 1,335 33.9 16 36.1 4 56.6 2 72.0 1 4
Institute University professional pr.
Uppsala Old University Medicine Medicine Long x 812 41.7 7 32.0 8 55.0 4 70.4 3 4
University professional pr.
- © PUF -
Linköping Large Medicine Medicine Long 667 37.2 12 36.6 3 54.4 5 68.5 9 4
University University professional pr.
Lund Old University Medicine Medicine Long 912 46.6 5 29.4 10 54.1 6 68.5 8 4
Stockholm Spec. Social Economics Long x 1,029 55.2 1 15.4 18 51.9 7 69.8 5 4
School of University Sciences professional pr.
Economics
Uppsala Old University Social Political General pr. x 235 46.8 4 32.8 7 51.5 9 66.4 14 4
University Sciences Sciences
University Old University Medicine Medicine Long 890 42.6 6 33.1 6 49.0 12 62.6 27 4
of Gothenburg professional pr.
Umeå Large Medicine Medicine Long 804 32.7 18 52.0 2 48.8 13 68.4 10 4
Chalmers Spec. Engineering Physics Long 465 49.2 3 14.8 21 47.7 17 68.2 11 4
of Technology

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National
University
page 143 / 256

Aptitude
Test
Royal Institute Spec. Engineering Physics Long x 469 40.1 8 11.3 30 46.3 27 69.3 6 4
of Technology University professional pr.
Lund Old University Engineering Other Courses 158 29.1 22 8.9 43 57.0 1 63.3 24 3
University
Lund Old University Engineering Industrial Long 346 35.5 14 8.1 48 56.1 3 71.4 2 3
University economics professional pr.
Chalmers Spec. Engineering Industrial Long 467 52.7 2 9.9 36 51.6 8 65.1 19 3
University University economics professional pr.
of Technology
Lund Old University Engineering Architecture Long 229 21.4 38 25.3 13 49.3 11 66.8 13 3
Linköping Large Engineering Industrial Long 190 37.9 10 9.5 40 47.4 19 70.0 4 3
- © PUF -
Lund Old University Engineering Biotechnology Long 271 26.9 24 6.3 82 47.2 21 64.9 20 3
Lund Old University Engineering Physics Long 374 33.2 17 7.2 61 47.1 22 66.3 15 3
Royal Institute Spec. Engineering Architecture Long x 366 21.0 41 17.5 15 47.0 23 62.0 31 2
Royal Institute Spec. Engineering Industrial Long x 544 37.5 11 8.3 45 46.5 25 65.4 17 3
of Technology University economics professional pr.
Chalmers Spec. Engineering Urban planning Short prof. pr. 158 31.6 20 11.4 28 41.1 46 62.0 30 3
University University
of Technology
Royal Institute Spec. Engineering Other Courses x 289 23.2 33 9.3 41 49.5 10 62.6 26 2
of Technology University
Uppsala Old University Engineering Other Long x 231 16.9 57 4.3 140 48.5 14 68.8 7 2

National
page 144 / 256

University
Aptitude
Test
Stockholm Old University Social Psychology Long x 345 15.1 67 56.5 1 48.4 16 58.0 47 2
University Sciences professional pr.
Lund Old University Social Political General pr. 344 17.4 56 7.3 60 47.7 18 66.9 12 2
University Sciences Sciences
Royal Institute Spec. Engineering Electronics Long x 274 13.1 86 6.2 85 46.4 26 66.1 16 2
University Old University Social Business General pr. 344 32.0 19 7.6 53 45.6 29 59.0 41 2
of Gothenburg Sciences studies
University Old University Social Journalism General pr. 246 7.3 159 17.1 16 44.3 30 54.5 74 2
of Gothenburg Sciences
Lund Old University Medicine Medicine General pr. 129 34.1 15 7.0 66 44.2 31 58.1 45 1
University
- © PUF -
Uppsala Old University Social Psychology Long x 392 24.2 29 28.8 11 41.6 43 58.4 44 2
Lund Old University Social Psychology Long 385 25.7 27 27.5 12 41.0 48 57.9 49 2
Swedish Univ. Spec. Natural Veterinary Long x 376 26.9 25 31.4 9 37.2 83 50.0 121 2
of University Sciences professional pr.
Agricultural
Sciences
University Old University Social Psychology Long 406 26.8 26 33.7 5 37.2 84 52.0 100 2
of Gothenburg Sciences professional pr.
University Old University Social Law Long 642 31.0 21 12.0 26 31.5 176 46.6 168 2
of Gothenburg Sciences professional pr.
University of Old University Medicine Dentistry Long 126 35.7 13 15.1 19 31.0 190 51.6 106 2
Gothenburg professional pr.

Linköping Large Engineering Industrial Long 642 22.0 36 4.8 120 48.4 15 60.4 33 1

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National
University
page 145 / 256
Aptitude
Test
Uppsala Old University Engineering Physics Long x 330 23.6 31 7.6 52 47.3 20 59.4 38 1
Lund Old University Social Business General pr. 116 5.2 226 1.7 356 45.7 28 52.6 93 1
University Sciences studies
Uppsala Old University Engineering Biotechnology Long x 230 24.3 28 7.4 58 43.0 34 59.1 40 1
Lund Old University Humanities Design Long 114 8.8 134 1.8 353 42.1 40 64.9 21 1
University & Arts professional pr.
Royal Institute Spec. Engineering Biotechnology Long x 286 21.0 43 4.9 114 42.0 41 63.6 22 1
Lund Old University Social Law Long 1,143 26.9 23 7.8 51 41.6 42 55.6 61 1
Chalmers Spec. Engineering Architecture Long 219 22.8 35 22.8 14 41.1 47 58.0 46 1
- © PUF -
of Technology
Uppsala Old University Humanities Literature Courses x 108 13.9 77 5.6 97 40.7 51 63.0 25 1
University & Arts
Uppsala Old University Natural Statistics Courses x 115 8.7 136 11.3 29 40.0 56 56.5 55 1
University Sciences
Uppsala Old University Social Social Sciences General pr. x 218 13.3 83 3.2 198 39.9 56 61.0 30 1
University Sciences
Uppsala Old University Humanities History of Ideas Courses x 101 9.9 119 6.9 67 39.6 62 63.4 23 1
University & Arts
Stockholm Old University Social Journalism Courses x 234 15.0 69 15.0 20 39.3 65 50.0 118 1
University Sciences
Chalmers Spec. Engineering Biotechnology Long 248 39.5 9 6.9 71 38.7 70 59.7 36 1
of Technology

page 146 / 256
National
University
Aptitude
Test
Linköping Large Engineering Other Courses 148 23.6 30 6.1 90 38.5 71 50.0 120 1
University Old University Humanities Philosophy Courses 154 13.6 79 11.7 27 37.7 80 55.2 66 1
of Gothenburg &Arts
Linköping Large Social Business General pr. 130 4.6 246 0.8 478 36.2 96 65.4 18 1
University University Sciences studies
Uppsala Old University Humanities Philosophy Courses x 140 7.1 166 12.1 25 35.7 103 57.1 54 1
University & Arts
Linköping Large Social Psychology Long 245 18.4 53 12.2 24 34.7 115 49.0 138 1
University University Sciences professional pr.
Örebro New Social Psychology Long 200 13.0 88 15.5 17 32.0 162 41.5 254 1
- © PUF -

Umeå Large Social Psychology Long 363 14.3 75 13.2 22 30.9 195 47.9 146 1
Umeå Large Medicine Medicine Courses 266 7.1 165 12.4 23 23.7 360 36.5 337 1
Note: Grades indicate the percentage of students with upper secondary grades above 19.0 out of 20.0. NUAT (the National University Aptitude
Test) indicates the percentage of students with a score of 1.8 to 2.0. Social class indicates the percentage of students with upper middle class or
upper class background. Highly educated indicates the percentage of students with at least one parent carrying at least a three-year university
degree.

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ELITE STRATEGIES IN A UNIFIED SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Mikael Börjesson, Donald Broady

Presses Universitaires de France | « L'Année sociologique »

2016/1 Vol. 66 | pages 115 à 146

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Elite Strategies in a Unified

Résumé. – L’absence de filières d’excellence élitaire distingue la Suède de presque

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Mots clés. – Analyse de correspondance ; Classes sociales ; Élites ; Enseignement

L’Année sociologique, 2015, 65, n° 2, pp. 115-146

116 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

© Presses Universitaires de France | Téléchargé le 22/08/2022 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 181.65.33.57)

Keywords. – Correspondence Analysis; Social Classes; Elites; Elite Education;

In most parts of the world there are well-defined mechanisms

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education﻿ ﻿ 117

it scholarly, economic, cultural or social. Another visible mecha-

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118 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

spokespersons allowed themselves to call for or even acknowledge

© Presses Universitaires de France | Téléchargé le 22/08/2022 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 181.65.33.57)

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education﻿ ﻿ 119

The Swedish educational system and its elitist dynamics

The space of higher education and the subspace of elite education

© Presses Universitaires de France | Téléchargé le 22/08/2022 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 181.65.33.57)

120 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

Figure 1. The Swedish space of higher education

© Presses Universitaires de France | Téléchargé le 22/08/2022 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 181.65.33.57)

As shown in Figure 1, the entire space of higher education

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education﻿ ﻿ 121

the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), the Stockholm School

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How to define elite education and elites?

122 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

According to a meritocratic definition, elite education takes place

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Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education﻿ ﻿ 123

dependent on cultural and educational capital for their position

© Presses Universitaires de France | Téléchargé le 22/08/2022 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 181.65.33.57)

Social and meritocratic elite higher education

124 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

gious longer professional programmes, especially in medicine and

© Presses Universitaires de France | Téléchargé le 22/08/2022 sur www.cairn.info (IP: 181.65.33.57)

5. Including veterinary science.

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education﻿ ﻿ 125

Our four indicator variables can be used to further clarify the

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126 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

The expansion of higher education and its effects

The expansion and the elites

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Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education﻿ ﻿ 127

Figure 2. Number of Registered Students

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By considering the expansion in the 1990s in more detail,

128 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

Second, the expansion was also driven by a restructuring of study

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Increasing numbers of women enrolled

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education﻿ ﻿ 129

organisation högskolan, caused an instant shift in the gender balance.

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130 Mikael Börjesson and Donald Broady

Mots clés. – Analyse de correspondance ; Classes sociales ; Élites ; Enseignement

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 117

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 119

Figure 1. The Swedish space of higher education

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 121

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 123

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 125

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 127

Figure 2. Number of Registered Students

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 129

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 131

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 133

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 135

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 137

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 139

Elite Strategies in a Unified System of Higher Education 141