IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v64y2013i3p574-586.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Analyzing structural stratification in the Swedish higher education system: Data contextualization with policy‐history analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Olof Hallonsten
  • Daniel Holmberg

Abstract

20th century massification of higher education and research in academia is said to have produced structurally stratified higher education systems in many countries. Most manifestly, the research mission of universities appears to be divisive. Authors have claimed that the Swedish system, while formally unified, has developed into a binary state, and statistics seem to support this conclusion. This article makes use of a comprehensive statistical data source on Swedish higher education institutions to illustrate stratification, and uses literature on Swedish research policy history to contextualize the statistics. Highlighting the opportunities as well as constraints of the data, the article argues that there is great merit in combining statistics with a qualitative analysis when studying the structural characteristics of national higher education systems. Not least the article shows that it is an over‐simplification to describe the Swedish system as binary; the stratification is more complex. On basis of the analysis, the article also argues that while global trends certainly influence national developments, higher education systems have country‐specific features that may enrich the understanding of how systems evolve and therefore should be analyzed as part of a broader study of the increasingly globalized academic system.

Suggested Citation

  • Olof Hallonsten & Daniel Holmberg, 2013. "Analyzing structural stratification in the Swedish higher education system: Data contextualization with policy‐history analysis," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 64(3), pages 574-586, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:64:y:2013:i:3:p:574-586
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.22773
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.22773
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.22773?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Olof Hallonsten, 2014. "ERAWATCH Country Reports 2012: Sweden," JRC Research Reports JRC90739, Joint Research Centre.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:64:y:2013:i:3:p:574-586. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.