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WOMEN

More women opting for engineering studies

Germany – long known for its engineering expertise – showed an overall decline in new student engineering enrollment, but the data did show more women opting for the career path, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said on Saturday.

Published: 6 April 2013 10:29 CEST
More women opting for engineering studies
Photo: DPA

Overall the number of new students dropped by nine percent to 106,300 for both summer and winter enrolment for 2012/2013, but the Federal Statistics Office, which released the figures, said this mainly had to do with a statistical quirk.

More men enrolled in engineering studies last year than normally following the German government’s decision to end required military service. That inflated the numbers for 2011.

Still the statisticians were able to detect a 2.7 percent increase in the number of women students wanting to become engineers, a profession long-dominated by men not only in Germany but elsewhere.

Male enrolment dropped by 12 percent, but the data office appeared unconcerned, noting that patterns appear to be returning to normal following a big increase in 2011, mainly from men who no longer had to take time off between secondary and university studies because military service was no longer required.

The Local/mw

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EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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