Sweden tackles diversity problem

Ethnic and social diversity must be improved in higher education if Sweden is to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by the multiplicity of its society, a report to education minister Thomas Ostros says.

Such improvements would also contribute to higher quality, the report's author, Lund University rector Boel Flodgren added.

Ms Flodgren said that almost 20 per cent of Sweden's population comes from other countries or cultures, a diversity that gives the country a wealth it has not had before. But signs of an emerging class society, where ethnicity is a differentiating factor, accompany big - and growing - differences in the living conditions of the various groups.

Education helps to equalise differences and increase understanding between individuals and groups, while giving individuals a better chance to take part in social life and in the labour market. It must be an objective that higher education mirrors the social, ethnic and sexual composition of the population as a whole, she said.

About 30 per cent of the Swedish school system's annual output of pupils starts in higher education before the age of 25; the goal is 50 per cent within a few years.

A child of academics is six to seven times more likely to go to university than a child whose parents have only a basic education. Fourteen per cent of children from working-class backgrounds enter higher education, while 50 per cent of the children of higher-placed civil servants attend university.

There is a need for research into ethnicity and higher education, the report says. "The few Swedish studies to throw light on the relationship between ethnicity and social background in the transition to higher education stress that social background is the strongest factor."

The segregation and marginalisation that characterises the situation of many immigrants in Sweden tends to create an ethnic lower class, which certainly influences the transition to higher education, it added.

Ms Flodgren said Sweden should spend SEK500 million (Pounds 37.4 million) a year over the next five years to improve social and ethnic diversity in higher education. She recommended a number of measures, including:

* A special term, with separate scholarships, to prepare students for university, broadening the recruitment base for higher education

* Swedish tuition in higher education for foreign students and academics

* Targets and action plans for ethnic and social diversity in higher education, with more flexible selection rules and procedures and active recruitment efforts

* Diversity as a quality criterion

* Funding for a multi-disciplinary research programme on diversity in higher education.