The Education Grant - actors, networks and ideas behind the Swedish higher education funding reform 1992-1995

The project will study the reform of the system for funding higher education in Sweden 1992-1995. The core of the reform was pay for performance: universities after 1993 have been paid for students registered and courses/exams passed. The reform can be seen as a paradigmatic shift in the history if higher education in Sweden: it gave rise to a conceptual economisation of education: comparisons between more profitable courses, marketing of courses, etc.

It also gave rise to an evaluation culture linked to the quality problem arising from the incentives to pass as many students as possible. Quality came into focus, but the definition of quality had more to do with quality management than with scientific and pedagogic quality.

The project idea is to study the commission of inquiry that constructed the system, simply the architects behind the reform: their networks, professional identity and ideas. The aim is to explain how the reform was carried out so fast and in spite of immediate resistance from universities. This is to be done by a study of the committee archive of the commission of inquiry: Resursberedningen, that existed 1992-1995 and its technical subcommittee, as well as an interview study.