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TECHNOLOGY

Swedish universities earn spots in top 100

UPDATED: Two Swedish technical universities climbed an annual ranking of the world's top schools on Tuesday while some of the country's older higher education seats dropped from last year.

Published: 15 September 2015 08:17 CEST
Updated: 15 September 2015 11:39 CEST
Swedish universities earn spots in top 100
Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology earned a spot in the top-100. Photo: Ulf Lundin/imagebank.sweden.se

Lund in southern Sweden was ranked as Sweden's top university and came 70th overall in the QS World University Rankings, dropping from number 60 in last year's tables.

Eight Swedish universities feature in the QS rankings, and all but two either dropped or remained in the same position as last year.

The Royal Institute of Technology (Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH) climbed to 92nd place, knocking the ancient Uppsala University down to number 102 from 81 in the 2014 rankings. And Gothenburg-based Chalmers University of Technology leaped from 175th to 132nd place.

Founded in 1827, KTH is Sweden's oldest and largest technical seat of higher education and provides one third of the country's technical and engineering research at university level.

“With over 18,000 students and an international reputation for excellence, the university continues to nurture the world's brightest minds, helping to shape the future,” reads the QS description.

READ ALSO: Seven bizarre Swedish academic traditions

While Sweden was the only Nordic nation to claim two spots in the tables, honours for the highest-ranked university in the region went to the University of Copenhagen.

The Danish university came in at 69th place in the QS rankings, which compare the world’s top 800 institutions across six criteria covering research, employability, teaching and international outlook.

The highest ranking Norwegian school was the University of Oslo at number 135, while Finland's University of Helsinki was ranked the 96th best. No Icelandic universities were included. 

The number one university in the world, according to QS, is the United States' MIT, closely followed by Harvard, with Stanford and the United Kingdom's Cambridge claiming a shared third place.

The QS World University Rankings annually rate 800 universities, based on measures including academic reputation, reputation among employers, citations, mentoring and student performance. The full rankings can be viewed here.

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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