Internationalising Higher Education in Sweden: The Development of a National Priority

Abstract

This paper reviews the efforts of one country, Sweden, to internationalise higher education, with particular reference to a number of target fields, including foreign languages, curricula, and international exchanges involving students and faculty. However, because the study was largely inspired by the concerns of an American body, the (US) President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies, frequent comparative reference will be made, in the course of the paper, to the United States. The presidential Commission was set up in 1978 with a one-year mandate to assess the US need for foreign language and international studies specialists and to recommend appropriate programmes in these fields at all academic levels) as well as the private and public support they would require. Yet it soon became clear that a comparative survey of the efforts of other countries to strengthen foreign language and international studies in their education systems would have been invaluable. Unfortunately prevented by the limited time and funds at the US Commission's disposal, such a survey would undoubtedly have shed much light on the way nations are reacting to the ever-expanding need for more international specialists and greater public understanding of foreign affairs in an interdependent world. Sweden is probably unique in giving deliberate priority to internationally-oriented education policies geared to meeting this need. However, several additional considerations were instrumental to the preparation of the present paper. Not least of these were its authors' participation in a workshop at Alvsjo, near Stockholm, in February 1980, to evaluate the implementation of such policies (a meeting to which Opper contributed a major background paper) and Burn's responsibilities as Executive Director of the above-mentioned US presidential Commission.