Swedish post-secondary VET is since 2009 organised in what is called Higher Vocational Education (HVE). Alongside state funded initiatives concerning initial VET in municipal adult education the establishment of the HVE system have been implied to reflect the liberal conservative government’s ‘work strategy’, a principle making employment the one crucial bearer of social inclusion, in using adult education to satisfy short-term labour market needs of business and industry (Andersson & Wärvik, 2012). In 2016 the nearly 50 000 students partaking in HVE programmes made up about just a bit over 10 % of students in Swedish higher education, provided the HVE students are included in the total tally alongside students at universities and university colleges. In the year 2022 the number of HVE students is intended to be 70 000, indicating a rapid expansion (National Agency for Higher Vocational Education, 2017, 2018; Swedish Higher Education Authority, 2017).

An analysis of HVE policy have elucidated the conditions for the process of recontextualizing knowledge in curricula construction (Author, nd). Results show how representatives of employers and the education providers are to convene directly with one another to select what skills and competences the HVE programmes should involve to meet the needs of the employers. A junction between these two type of actors, without any involvement from for instance a national regulatory body, is something different then the more common linear course of curricular formation (Bernstein, 1996). 

Analysing a broad set of data, including interviews with actors in HVE, observations from meeting where employers and education providers convene as well as course syllabi for programmes this paper will examine HVE curricula making.

The discussion of this paper relates to previous research on curricula in VET (Gamble, 2016; Hodge, 2016; Wheelahan, 2015)and the research questions guiding the analysis are focused on selection, organisation and valuation of knowledge (Bernstein, 1990, 1996, 1999; Wheelahan, 2015; Young, 2006, 2013)