What is the value of students?

Jag har under våren arbetat på uppdrag av SACO som moderator i den europeiska organisationen för tjänstemanna- och akademikerfack, Eurocadres, projekt StartPro. Jag och David Svenn, ordförande för SACO Studentråd, skrev för en tid sedan den här debattartikeln om värdet av studenter. Ständigt lika aktuellt...


Almost every day we meet new alarming headlines about the numbers of un-employed ex-students. Earlier a academic education were approximately a guarantee to get a good employment, today we can suspect that our universities are on their way to just get a extension of the gymnasium.

SACO Student council sees a serious danger if the higher education loses its value. The goal seems to go toward pushing so many students as possible in to our universities and then give them a manufactured kind of academic knowledge. We commercialize knowledge, and the view of students is simply quantitative. SACO Student council is truly positive over the fact that we have more and more students, but we claim that all this students meet a higher education of good quality!

To strength the quality we need to focus on the whole education system. High school and gymnasium need more resources to graduate pupils with high basic knowledge. The higher education shouldn’t handle that kind of basic education. It requires harder demand to get in to the universities at the same time the gymnasium get more funds to handle their mission!

When the students are ready to get to the higher level they need to have more teachers which must be well-educated! To shorten the transition period from student to professional should all students afford a possibility during education to be a trainee. Even mentors and network between students and professionals have exposed success and high value.

SACO Student council sees that strength of the quality of the entire education system is the safest way to reduce the numbers of well-educated un-employed, not that the students need to study 9 years at a gymnasium-level.

Written by David Svenn, President of SACO Student council, and Eva Westerberg, vice president of SACO Student council