Study assistance and degree completion in Swedish higher education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Swedish study assistance for students in higher education differs in some important ways from study assistance in most other western countries. Every student who meets certain financial requirements has a right to receive the aid irrespective of the economic status of his/her parents. A great deal of the total sum received is a loan which the student has to repay. Today the loan part amounts to 93%. In spite of being mainly a loan system, study assistance costs a lot of public money. The main aims of this paper are to investigate the influence of social background, sex and intelligence on the utilisation of study assistance and to investigate the influence of all these variables on degree completion among students in higher education. The groups studied are two nationally representative samples of individuals born in 1948 and in 1953 respectively. According to the results, utilisation of study assistance is practically independent of social background and sex but there is a weak tendency for students of high ability to use the aid more often than students of low ability. As to the influence on degree completion study assistance is shown to be the most important variable of those mentioned above. Furthermore, it has had a considerable socially equalisin effect on degree completion. However, during the period studied, the effect of the aid on degree completion has decreased among students in open admissions courses, but this seems mainly to be caused by a declining motivation among students to complete a degree and not by changes in study assistance.