Knowledge Traditions in Higher Education. R and D for Higher Education.

Overview & Synopsis

Issues pertaining to knowledge traditions that are important to the reform of higher education in Sweden are considered. While nonacademic parts of higher education (e.g., vocational/technical, nursing) account for more than half of its admissions, it is suggested that thinking regarding higher education in recent years has used the ideals of the research university. Various ways of viewing the planning and activities of higher education are examined, including the propositions that knowledge is a collection of concepts and skills (Liedman, 1978) and that knowledge is embedded in a class-determined world picture (Williams, 1965). The present higher education system has developed from a diversity of institutions that reveal the abundance of knowledge traditions in society, including schools of agriculture, teacher training colleges, and schools of medicine. Each of the various types of institution has its own ideology, its own approach to knowledge, and its own system of values. The tasks of higher education are usually delineated as teaching and research. While research links have become a watchword of the reform of higher education, there are questions about what this implies: (1) whether all basic higher education must be linked with scientific research, or (2) whether every part of higher education has some responsibility for the development of its knowledge traditions. (SW)