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EDUCATION

Karolinska joins free online-course community

Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet has signed up to offer free online courses, joining a network of 27 universities worldwide that reach nearly a million students.

Published: 23 May 2013 08:14 CEST
Karolinska joins free online-course community

“It also means that we’re honouring our social responsibilities,” said Karolinska edX coordinator Nabil Zary.

“We’ve been wanting to share our knowledge and make our courses more widely available for a long time, and now at last we’ve found the means to do it. This is just the beginning.”

The EdX system was devised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Karolinska will join top universities such as Berkeley, Cornell, Toronto and McGill.

By next autumn, Karolinska will offer four courses online.

“It makes Karolinska Institutet an important actor on the global educational arena…and puts it in good company,” said dean of higher education Professor Jan-Olov Höög.

“”We hope that by being part of this global context we will show the way for other Swedish universities,” added Zary.

“Being able to offer courses online not only lifts our overseas profile, but also importantly motivates the development of new courses.”

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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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