Expanded college attendance has become the policy equivalent of Doctor Sloan’s liniment, to relieve every conceivable social ailment and, in relation to the high costs and the even bigger expectations, this is astonishingly seldom discussed. Everyone likes more education – and the more education, the better. Or is it?

The academic flares have been sent up to Sylvester. A couple of years ago, a group of historians from Uppsala drew huge attention when they, on the second day of the year, revealed that more and more students were having difficulty expressing themselves coherently in writing. The day before New Year’s Eve last year, Saco’s Chairman Göran Arrius and two of his associates urged moderation regarding the expansion of college education: ”unilateral investment in more places favours neither society, universities nor students who receive training of questionable quality.”

Expanded college attendance has become the policy equivalent of Doctor Sloan’s liniment, to relieve every conceivable social ailment and, in relation to the high costs and the even bigger expectations, this is astonishingly seldom discussed. Everyone likes more education – and the more education, the better. Or is it?

Yes and no. Betterment is always valuable, but higher education also needs to be examined with a critical eye. Does the sector deliver what it promises – or rather what politicians promise on its behalf? Are the new resources used well?

Certainly, higher education has received more money, but not in proportion to all the new places. It reduces quality. Too many students have neglected their lectures and manage to survive despite the fact that they do a moderate amount of work.

The trio from Saco make a few austere and necessary observations. Partly that the situation is becoming more difficult as more students from today’s inadequate primary and secondary schools come to college, and partly that it is only natural that the level drops when the number of places increases. Young people with good grades have already sought out higher education, so when the number of places increases, the average prerequisites will more or less automatically sink. You may want to increase student admission even further, but this will require very substantial additional resources.

What more is needed? In the theme section of this issue of Axess, the issue is tackled by a number of qualified writers. The approaches and proposals vary, of course, but insights about threats to quality are a given. A general cheerleading atmosphere does not help anyone.

It has led to a thaw in immigration policy. Yet it’s more about the careful reconsideration of words than tangible change in the act, but it is still valuable. Politicians Göran Hägglund and Jan Björklund and writers such as Expressen’s Anna Dahlberg and DagensIndustri’s PM Nilsson have taken the lead and deserve to be commended. It is unfortunate that so many in the public sector in Sweden have long argued that there can only be two different lines of immigration policy: either one is ‘decent’ and wants Sweden to have significantly more open borders than comparable countries. Or one is ‘indecent’ and wants to slam the door in the faces of those who are struggling.

We have received obstinacy and moralising instead of pragmatism and policy development.

It has made Sweden poorly equipped to cope with integration in practice and has led to increased distrust of people who realise that the all-or-nothing-line doesn’t work. Sweden would stand for ‘openness’, even if immigration became a little lower; it’s only to compare with how it looks in the wider world. A number of EU countries do not receive any quota of refugees.

In my world, good policy is about weighing ideals and interests, ideology and practice, against each other, and trying to maximise one of the values rarely works well. The immigration issue is no exception.

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To welcome people here is one value, to maintain the balance of community development is another, and it becomes difficult to cope with the latter if we do not accept the limitations of the former. There are already significant problems with alienation, and if we get a non-work-related immigration at a very high level for a number of years to come, it is very likely that parallel societies will form with even greater overcrowding, a lack of legal means of supporting themselves, and an increase in undeclared work and criminality. The school system, social services and medical care face even more difficult tests. This would be worrying in itself, and moreover it can lead to a rise in the general level of conflict and greater support for extremism.

How can we relieve the pressure without doing violence to the right of asylum? We can provide significantly greater resources to work against human trafficking, which we have made international commitments to pursue. We can issue more casual and less permanent residency. We can see that the requirement of family support becomes more than a paper tiger.

Neither would transform Sweden from ‘open’ to ‘closed’, but it could make reception and integration more manageable and show the people that those in power are not tackling this issue with naivety or brutality but with compassion and realism.