Swedish Universities, 1911
From Swedish Life in Town and Country by Oscar Gustaf von Heidenstam, 1911
Location: Sweden
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Swedish Life in Town and Country by Oscar Gustaf von Heidenstam, 1911.
There are two universities in Sweden Upsala in the North, founded in 1477; and Lund in the South, founded in 1668, to which may be added the Medical College (Karolinska Institutet) in Stockholm, founded in 1810, and limited to the medical faculty, and the high schools of Stockholm and Gothenburg, founded respectively in 1878 and 1891, for letters and the sciences. The number of students at each of these was in 1900 as follows: Upsala, 1449; Lund, 649; Medical College, 294; High School at Stockholm, 40; and High School at Gothenburg, 67.
The studies at the universities are thorough and comprehensive, but unusually long. They have each four faculties—theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and philosophy, and grant three different degrees in each—Candidate, Licentiate, and Doctor, besides special degrees in theology and jurisprudence for entering the Church and the Government services.
Even these last, which are the easiest to obtain, require a course of from four to five years, but the others take from seven to eleven years. Thus, to obtain the degree qualifying him to enter the law courts or practise as a lawyer, a young man requires seven years of university life; to obtain that of licentiate of medicine, without which he will not be allowed to practise as a medical man, takes no less than eleven years, including two years of hospital work; to qualify as a teacher (except in the primary schools) takes six to eight years; to prepare for ordination takes five to six years, and if a man aspires to a high theological degree, he must prolong his stay at the Alma Mater to nine years.
The reason of this unexampled length of time spent of necessity at the university in order to obtain the usual degrees, is not solely due to the high standard required. This standard is certainly high, and the degree of the Swedish universities holds high rank among the learned in consequence. But a great deal of the delay must be ascribed to the old-fashioned arrangements and formalities connected with attendance on lectures and the preparation for examination. The opinion is gaining ground that these are unnecessarily long, complicated, and tedious, and a movement has been set on foot which will probably lead to a reform in the procedure.
Too much liberty is also left to the student or undergraduate in the prosecution and co-ordination of his studies. Whether he works or not is known to no one but himself. He is alone responsible for the time taken and the order followed in preparing each subject for his examination. When he judges himself sufficiently prepared in one, he applies to the professor for a tentamen, or test trial, in the professor's special branch. If approved, the result of this preliminary examination counts in his favour in the general and public one. If rejected, he must return to his plodding on the subject for another three months or more, and then try again. It is only when he has obtained his tentamen certificates in all the prescribed subjects that he can go up for the final examination.
Unlike the English, the Swedish universities are non-residential. Like those of the Continent, they are only teaching institutions, and the students who matriculate at Upsala or Lund must lodge in town or board with the families living there. Beyond attending the lectures and going up to be "tested," they have no direct intercourse with their professors. The tie between the professors and students, and especially between the students themselves, is more closely kept up in private, in the peculiar associations which go by the name of Nations.
Every student must belong to the 'Nation' representing the part of the country he comes from. These "Nations," of which there are thirteen at Upsala and twelve at Lund, partake of the character alike of club, debating society, and trade union. A "Nation" is an association of students belonging to the same province formed for mutual assistance and entertainment. The members of a “Nation” elect among themselves their president and executive, their director or curator, and their orators; they choose from among their professors one as inspector of the “Nation” and others as honorary members of it. They meet in the evenings to debate on current university events or to arrange special entertainments, in which music, private theatricals, and Student Spex improvised comedies and "skits" on academic society form a prominent feature.
Now and then, when the "Nation's" funds are ample, they give a ball, to which the professors and their families are invited. Most of the “Nations” are rich enough to possess houses of their own in Upsala and Lund, in which they meet and give their entertainments.
Each “Nation” has its choir and its flag or standard, round which all the members rally when they march in procession to wait upon the authorities, to attend a ceremony, or to serenade a favourite professor.
The university men's choirs are also famous in Sweden. They have, indeed, obtained a certain European renown since they carried off the prizes for choir singing at the Paris Exhibition. The fresh and well-trained young voices, singing in parts and without accompaniment, the old Scandinavian melodies and the student songs of their country, now lively and martial and expressing the ardour and impetuousness of youth, now soft and melancholy with the peculiar pathos of the North, are well known to all who have visited Sweden.
They are often heard even out of the university, as the students are ever ready to enliven with their song a national festivity or a charitable entertainment. The different “Nations" of the university form a sort of federation which represents the whole body of students as matriculated at the Alma Mater (Studentkar). Its action is efficacious in maintaining discipline among the body and centralising its interests.
The universities dispose of large revenues and numerous scholarships, given to impecunious students to assist them in the pursuit of their studies. The aggregate capital of these foundations, the revenue of which is given away in such scholarships, amounts to about three million crowns (£166,666) at Upsala, a million and a half crowns at Lund, and 300,000 crowns at the Medical Institute of Stockholm. The total cost of the university establishment represented in 1898, 881,573 crowns a year for Upsala, 478,291 crowns for Lund, and 247,331 crowns for the Medical College at Stockholm. Of these expenses, about half come out of the university funds and the rest is paid by Government out of State revenue.
The University Extension movement, as introduced in England, has found its way to the Swedish universities. Since 1893, summer lectures have been held during the vacations both in Upsala and Lund, for persons otherwise unable to attend the regular university courses, and these have been frequented by about four hundred persons, principally schoolmasters and school-mistresses from the primary schools, who have employed their vacations in thus acquiring supplementary knowledge on special subjects.
The success of the attempt has led the university authorities to widen the sphere of these summer lectures, and make them accessible to all classes, and a committee of professors has been appointed by each of the universities to lecture during the vacations on various subjects. The idea of contributing to the general instruction of the masses has also found favour among the students.
Special associations (Verdandi, etc.) are formed with the object of writing and publishing light treatises on scientific subjects, which treatises are sold for a penny, and circulated especially among the working classes. Others (Studenter och Arbetare) have in view a closer intercourse between students and working men, by organising evening lectures, meetings, and private debates, in conjunction with the working men's associations.
In Stockholm, the movement has embraced a wider field. Lectures on scientific subjects have been combined with visits to the museums and historical monuments, under the guidance of special lecturers who explain the objects exhibited. The courses are arranged in combination with reduced railway fares from the provinces for those who participate, and cheap board in Stockholm on the Cook's tourist principle.
The idea, started by one of the professors of the Stockholm High School, Professor Leche, was tried for the first time two summers ago, under the guidance of a committee formed of professors of the High School and the Academy of Arts, and presided over by Prince Eugene, the King's youngest son.
A Government grant of one thousand crowns and as much from the Town Council enabled the committee to make a start, and six hundred participants for each course were accepted at a time, about seventy per cent, of these being women. The schoolhouses, empty during the vacations, were used as dormitories, and beds were offered at 4d. a night, while breakfast and dinner tickets were sold at reduced rates, available at several restaurants.
Each course lasted a fortnight, and even the comparatively poor were able to take part in it. It comprised visits to the museums, historical palaces and sites during the day, in which the professors acted as guides, and lectures in the evening in the large hall of the Academy of Arts.
The last three evenings were devoted to music and the drama. The lectures on these were followed by concerts, in which selections of classical music were performed, and two evenings at the theatre, one at the Opera, where one of Mozart's operas was sung, and the other at the Dramatic, where one of Shakespeare's plays was given (both at very reduced prices) for the members of the course.
On the last night, the course was closed by an out-of-door summer fete at Skansen, the open-air museum near Stockholm, where addresses alternating with national songs sung by student choirs, and country dances performed by the school children in national costume produced a scene of genuine Northern gaiety and merriment.
For young men destined for the technical trades and professions, there are open, after they have passed the "maturity" examination at the secondary school, two special institutions, where they complete their technical training the Technical High School of Stockholm, and the Chalmers
Technical Institute at Gothenburg, besides the elementary technical schools at Malmo, Norrkoping, Orebro, and Boras.
The Stockholm Technical School, which is the most complete, comprises five branches: (1) mechanical technology and machinery, shipbuilding and electro technics; (2) chemical technology; (3) mineralogy, metallurgy, and mining mechanics; (4) architecture; (5) engineering. The course in each of these sections takes between three and four years. Generally several are combined, constituting a course of six or seven years.
What specially characterises public instruction in Sweden, as may be seen by the above sketch of the institutions provided by the State, is its undoubted thoroughness and depth, though a serious penalty is paid for this in the extreme length of the course. By the time it is completed, and the young man issues from the protracted ordeal, armed for the battle of life, several of the best years of his youth are passed; he is already between twenty-five and thirty years of age when he treads on the threshold of his career. On the other hand, he enters it not only with the necessary qualifications whereby to rise to eminence in it, of which the severe tests he has undergone offer evident proof, but with the assurance of finding the way more or less open to success.
For the hedging in of all professions by obligations and requirements so comprehensive precludes undue competition and, to a certain extent, prevents overcrowding. Inevitably, the length of this educational training reacts on the social habits of the nation. It is the primary cause of the long engagements and the late marriages habitual in Sweden. A man can rarely marry before he is thirty, for only then can he conclude his studies and enter his profession. Yet he can look forward to that day with confidence as he approaches the time of his final examinations, for, his diplomas obtained, the coast lies clear for him.
Hence, as often as not, he becomes engaged while still at the university, spending his vacations and his spare time in the family of his fiancée, where he is treated like a son of the house, corresponding freely with her when he is away, living on a footing of great freedom and intimacy with her, until he has passed his final examination and obtained his first post, when they are able to marry and set up house for themselves. Under these circumstances, an engagement of three years is considered quite short, while one of seven is rather a long one, but anything between the two belongs to the usual order of things.
Heidenstam, Oscar Gustaf von. Swedish Life in Town and Country. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1911.
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