Competence indicates whether you are eligible to apply for an education or not. SFS believes that the level of eligibility for higher education must be justified on the basis of what is required to be able to assimilate the education. Eligibility requirements in addition to basic eligibility must be described in area eligibility so that applicants can easily get an overview of the eligibility requirements.
Suitability tests should generally not occur because they are usually not legally secure and risk preventing people with the right prior knowledge from studying. SFS believes that legally secure national criteria and routines for assessing real competence must be formulated.
All upper secondary school programs should provide basic eligibility, otherwise students' upper secondary school choices may exclude them from the university with consequences for the university's openness and representativeness.
SFS believes that the eligibility requirements at the advanced level should be designed so that applicants with different bachelor's programs can be accepted, unless specific prior knowledge is needed. Eligibility for the advanced level must reflect that knowledge and skills that the university teaches must be general.
Anyone who has completed a degree at an advanced level or has equivalent qualifications must be eligible to apply for postgraduate education in their subject area. Doctoral student places must be advertised openly and assessment must be made against a clear description of the program and the position. When announcing a research position, it must always be clear whether the position refers to a licentiate degree or doctoral degree.
SFS believes that a qualifying pre-education, for example a base year, should be able to provide a guaranteed place in one of the educations to which the pre-education gives eligibility. Eligible pre-education is an important tool for broadening recruitment to certain educations.
Selection refers to the admission process that is done to an education. It is important that the selection for the university is perceived as legitimate by Swedish society, regardless of which admission system is used. Therefore, the system must be transparent, predictable and fair.
SFS believes that a competition-based system with several ways of measuring merit is the most reasonable to use given the large number of study places, study places, educations and applicants. Other forms of selection such as lottery, ongoing selection or open admission with selection later in the education are resource inefficient and unpredictable.
The different groups of eligible: results from high school grades or supplemented high school grades, folk high school certificates, university entrance exams, alternative selection and previous number of completed credits at university are incomparable. It has been shown that the different selection instruments benefit different groups in the selection. The selection process will aim to adopt those with the best qualifications, but the study places will be distributed between the quota groups in a way that promotes broadened recruitment.
Access issues is about how students are admitted to higher education. Eligibility is about what qualifications a person must have in order to be admitted to an education. Selection is about which of the qualified applicants are admitted to the education.
SFS believes that everyone should have the same conditions and chances to compete for study places at the university, in that, among other things, the upper secondary school and the university entrance examination are available to everyone without fees.
With regard to admission to postgraduate education, SFS believes that admission needs to be changed to promote broadened recruitment. SFS wants to see formalized applications with greater clarity and transparency regarding the announcement of the positions. We believe that an employment board or similar should be involved in assessing applications received.
Read more about SFS 'views on these issues in the consultation response to the Access Inquiry (2017) and SFS' position An open and equal university for all (section 2.3. An available admission, p.7) and SFS's view of the university's scope, supply, funding and admission (Section 6, pp. 15-19). All documents are attached.