Towards Closer Contacts between Universities and Work

Abstract

During the 1970s several public investigations about education and research at the universities were made in Sweden. As a result a new law regulating higher education and the organisation of the universities was passed in 1977. In the investigations, as well as the Higher Education Act, the wish to increase contacts between the university and the rest of society plays an important part. Better links between studies and research on one side and the reality of professional life and actual work situations on the other are desired. Improved contacts can contribute to a better adaptation of academic training to the conditions of working life and the needs of society as a whole, which will lead to an improvement of the quality of education. By tradition the staffs and the students of some faculties, e.g. those of medicine and technology, already have strong links with the professional practice outside universities (medical service and industry), whereas students as well as stafEs of other faculties, e.g. those of liberal arts, have weaker links with their field of practice. It is not unusual that university professors have no contacts with or personal experience of the professions for which they train their students. They do not even know what professions their students might go into after their studies and what abilities and knowledge these professions