Public-private tendencies within higher education in Norway from a women’s perspective

Abstract

In a book called ‘Scenarier 2000’ (Hompland (ed.), 1987), which has caused considerable debate in Norway, a group of young social scientists predicts that in the course of the next decade women in Norway will begin to dominate those types of higher education that provide access to the leading positions in various parts of the country’s public sector. This trend implies that after the year 2000 women will be running the Norwegian welfare state. Men will make different educational choices than women, and their aim will be to hold leading positions in the private sector. Often they will choose education organized outside the public institutions of higher learning — in the so-called ‘grey’ or ‘hidden’ university. Some of the education in the ‘grey’ or ‘hidden’ university is controlled by private industrial or business enterprises and comprise what is often called the ‘corporate classroom.’ We see this trend toward differential education and employment by gender as a part of a larger process in which the public sector loses prestige and power as it gets ‘invaded’ by women. We are, then, addressing a new issue in political debate on education: the tendency to privatization within the educational system in Norway.