ABSTRACT
In the 1970s, Finnish and Swedish teacher education for primary school teachers was, together with other forms of professional education, integrated into systems of higher education. This chapter examines how this process affected the systems of higher education, resulting in a uniform system of universities in Finland and a two-level system consisting of universities and university colleges (högskolor) in Sweden. In both countries, the systems of higher education expanded rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s and in most cases, teacher education came to form the kernel around which these new institutions were formed. The chapter investigates how the differences between Sweden and Finland regarding the academic profile of the faculty at the old seminaries, the ambitions of teacher education reforms and the degree of academic freedom and autonomy granted to the small university colleges affected the academisation of these new institutions. The source material consists of reports from government committees, legislation, local histories of individual seats of learning and statistical data on, for example, the share of faculty in possession of doctoral degrees in the two countries.
