SWEDEN.

Once again muslims enriching us


Economics students can't count – "We are forced to lower the requirements"
Published April 19, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Domestic. Swedish universities are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in so-called higher education in Sweden: more and more economics students lack the math skills they should have learned in elementary school. Now six representatives of economics education write on DN Debatt that the situation has gotten out of hand.


The university stupor
Unemployment among young graduates is increasing
Highly educated people have lower IQs
Sweden breaks record in discrimination against boys
Men are "knocked out" by feminist school of thought
Higher education doesn't make stupid people smarter
Show all
“There are students in business administration programs who have difficulty rounding correctly, converting decimals to percentages, and calculating fractions,” they write.

Many also have poor speech perception and do not react when a calculated result is clearly unreasonable.

According to Christina Öberg, professor of business administration at Linnaeus University, the problem is clearly visible in teaching.

– This is something we notice very clearly. We are forced to lower the requirements, she tells Aftonbladet.

Universities must now use government-funded resources, which are actually intended for academic education, to help students learn mathematics at the high school level.

“Universities do not receive any extra resources for these educational initiatives; the costs must therefore be taken from the state funds that are actually intended for university-level courses,” the editorial states.

– We have to put more resources into getting them on the track, and these are resources that could really have gone to other things, says Christina Öberg.

In addition to many students failing their studies, the development risks having serious consequences for Sweden as a whole, according to the article authors.

The lack of accounting expertise has already led to certain assignments being outsourced to subcontractors abroad, which could pose a risk if the jobs end up in, for example, China and other high-IQ countries.

“This can create greater distance from decision-makers and also pose a security risk,” the authors write.

The debaters want to see a long-term solution and propose three concrete measures: a systems perspective with cooperation between authorities and higher education institutions, increased dissemination of good examples, and a review of how resources for higher education are distributed.

“Business administration is the single largest subject in higher education in Sweden, with more than 43,000 registered students,” they write.

“We have a skewed distribution of resources between the amount of education in the university world,” says Öberg.

The debate article is signed by representatives from Uppsala University, Linnaeus University, Mälardalen University and the Karlstad School of Economics, among others. The authors conclude with a clear call:

“Because we want the economists of the future to be able to count, we cannot rest on our laurels. It is time to act.”