This paper presents the focus and theoretical outline of a doctoral study contributing to the exploration of VET and higher VET. This is done by examining policy and its implementation, as well as relations between the two, in the Higher Vocational Education (the HVE, In Swedish: Yrkeshögskolan or YH). The inquiries will be considered in a two-step policy ethnographical study combining analysis of policy documents with case studies of HVE-programmes and their management.

The HVE has a growing share in the Swedish educational system. It is getting bigger, and is used extensively as a good example. Politicians and social commentators are using the good results regarding employment rate of students who graduated (ca 90 %) as a justification for designing other forms of education and labour market interventions after the HVE-model.

The political leaders fashioned an educational structure trying to perfectly match the labour market when creating the HVE in 2009. Within the HVE there is a wide range of programmes in many different fields of study, all at non-academic tertiary level and the HVE allow adult students to further or change their careers trough an educational type where programmes only are given if there is an explicit demand from employers pledging their needs and involvement. This means that there is a close, albeit compulsory, relation between education and employers giving the HVE and its programmes a distinctive character.

Studies done, examining the HVE, are less than a handful and all commissioned work from the responsible national agency. There is a gap in the research field and a need to study this new form of education. I will be exploring policy and implementation in the HVE in a curriculum study making use of the Bernsteinian concepts of curriculum theory; Classification, framing and code.