2006:6 R

Dimensioning higher education - a basis for planning for the academic year of 2006/07

The aim of this report is to focus on supply and demand in the labour market for groups with different qualifications when students beginning their programmes during the academic year 2006/07 will be entering it. What will the labour market look like for students from about 30 different programmes, which comprise the majority of those with qualifications from higher education?

This is the first time that the National Agency for Higher Education is publishing an advisory report of this kind. Potential users of the report include the government, educational planners at the higher education institutions, student counsellors in the upper-secondary schools and future students. For about a quarter of the programmes, the calculations indicate a good balance between labour market demands and the numbers completing the programmes they are now beginning. Otherwise there are manifest risks of either surpluses or deficits if no changes are made in the dimensioning of programmes.

Vocational teachers, after-school recreation centre staff, nursery school teachers, dentists, biomedical analysts and doctors are among the groups for which estimates clearly indicate a shortage of newly qualified personnel. Primary school teachers specialising in the more advanced levels, upper-secondary school teachers and those with qualifications in the fine arts, journalism and the natural sciences are groups for whom there is a great risk that surpluses will arise with the current dimensioning of programmes.