Setting the ‘normal study time’: temporal acceleration and standardisation in 1960s Swedish higher education
本文分析1960年代瑞典高等教育改革中引入‘正常学习时间’概念、工程教育作为时间实验以及哲学系学习路径的标准化，揭示政策制定者与学术人员之间的时间冲突，为当前高等教育政策辩论提供历史视角。
The acceleration of academic time has been a persistent theme in debates on higher education, fuelled by politicians as well as students. In this article, we analyse and discuss acceleration and standardisation in connection to political reforms in 1960s Sweden, which, we argue, formed a turning point in the temporal organisation of higher education. Relying on state commission reports and governmental bills as main sources, our study zooms in on the three following cases: 1. How the notion of ‘normal study time’ was introduced into higher education at the beginning of the great student expansion, 2. How engineering education in particular was used as a temporal experiment in order to develop new forms for accommodating unprecedentedly large cohorts of students, and 3. How study paths at the faculties of philosophy were depicted as a political problem, in special need of temporal streamlining. The results show that the efforts to introduce a novel, accelerated temporal regime in the higher education policy, based on ideals of efficiency and rational planning, were met with resistance from academic staff. Policy makers needed to balance and negotiate conflicting temporalities, whilst navigating academic traditions and cultures. Our analysis of these examples of temporal synchronisation – and friction – in the past provide critical perspectives on current and structural challenges in higher education policy debate.