Social mångfald? Om förutsägbar bildning och om demokrati som sätter värden på spel

Abstract

The object of this article is to analyse the liberal discourse repeated in a report from the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education. The aim of the report was to evaluate the work to recruit young people from working class or non-academic backgrounds to the universities. The goal is to create social diversity at the universities. Social diversity is understood as good because it brings students from different backgrounds together and makes them get to know each other. It is maintained that this sort of experience is good to have in working life. The goal of learning is to make the students employable. There is no attempt to challenge the hierarchical construction of classes in society or to understand university or learning as something challenging and unpredictable. In the report classes are reconstructed as unlike the middle class, the working class is understood as a category of non-rational people.