Evaluation in Swedish Higher Education: Recent Trends and the Outlines of a Model

Abstract

In Sweden, as in many other countries, there are mounting demands for the evaluation of universities and colleges, usually on the grounds that research and higher education are playing a progressively more important part in development at progressively greater cost. Quality and efficiency have to be guaranteed and audited. An additional reason is cited in Sweden: the ongoing decentralisation of decisionmaking powers. To this one might object that in Britain the opposite process appears to be taking place, but still with equally strong demands for evaluation. Evaluation the new watchword-now seems to be equally applicable in all situations and systems. It is often treated as a separate phenomenon, as an extraneous cure for all ills. But evaluation forms part of a complex to which its forms and functions have to be adapted if it is to have any real point. In the following pages I will try to analyse developments in Sweden during the past few years as regards evaluation in the higher education sector, and I shall do so by treating evaluation (1) as part of a steering system, (2) as a phase in an active process, and (3) as interaction within an institutional organisation.