Global Spotlight: Sweden

With Sweden providing higher education free of charge to its citizens, many Swedes choose to remain in the country for their studies. Though there has been modest growth in the number of Swedes studying in the United States, Sweden has seen overall declines in students going abroad for 3 consecutive years.

However, because the country also offers free higher education to European Union and Swiss citizens, Sweden draws large numbers of international students from Europe. Fees for non-EU students were introduced in 2011; though international enrollment numbers have not recovered to pre-2011 numbers, international students now make up 28 percent of new students in Sweden.

Two recent efforts toward attracting international students and scholars include a proposed easing of residency restrictions on students and researchers starting in 2020, as well as a 5-year, $35.6 million partnership with the University of Rwanda.

By the numbers:

37,834: Number of international students enrolled at Swedish universities during the 2017–18 academic year, a 5.4 percent increase from the previous year.

23,800: The estimated number of Swedish students studying abroad during the 2017–18 academic year, a slight decline from the previous year’s numbers.

1,661: Number of U.S. students who studied in Sweden during the 2016–17 academic year, an increase of more than 15 percent from the previous year.

1477: Year that Uppsala University, the oldest continuously operating university in the country and across all Nordic countries, was founded.

$31 million: Investment by the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg in a long-term initiative to address