The Academic Profession in Swedish Higher Education: Continuity and Change inthe New Century

The purpose of this article is to describe the composition and internal stratificationof the university teaching staff at Swedish higher education institutions. We showthat four fault lines shape the higher education field in the 21st century. These are,firstly, the resource hierarchies both between old and new higher education institutionsand between the fields of science, and, secondly, the prestige hierarchybetween research and teaching staff categories and between the senior lecturers’conditions of existence in the center of the system and its periphery. We argue thatit is necessary to analyze how these stratification lines have come into place to understandhow they work and interact with each other, and how they have partially reinforcedeach other, but at the same time have left room for a transformation of theuniversity teachers’ conditions across the university system.