Education for working professionals

Background of the programme

Sweden faces a series of complex societal challenges, at the same time as a rapid technological development leads to a comprehensive transformation of the business sector. Altogether, this contributes to changed and increasing needs for relevant knowledge and competence, needs that can no longer be solely met through the addition of newly graduated individuals. An increasingly important contribution will therefore be competence development of already working professionals and recurrent education during the working life.

To many universities, working students is a newly added target group that prompts adaptations of the educational activities in order to be able to meet the group’s needs and conditions for education in an appropriate manner.

Project design

The programme provides funding for the development of methods and formats for educational activities aimed at working professionals. Projects should involve close collaboration between universities, business partners and possibly other relevant stakeholders. Together, they are expected to analyse and define competence needs, jointly develop and test implement relevant educational activities.

To match the needs and conditions of the applicant research and education environment, the programme is offered in two variants – Mini and Maxi. More details about the two variants can be found in the call text.

Terms and conditions

Applicants: Universities within the Knowledge Foundation’s target group with degree-awarding powers at master’s level or higher. The programme can be carried out in collaboration between research and educational environments at several universities. Read more about the universities we support.

Co-funding requirements: The total co-funding from business actors must correspond to at least 10 percent of the amount requested from the Knowledge Foundation. A single business actor may not account for more than 70 percent of the total co-financing.

Maximum funding amount: SEK 5 million (Mini) or SEK 12 million (Maxi)

Project duration: 3 years (Mini) or 5 years (Maxi)

The programme’s contribution to strong research and educational environments

The programme contributes by enabling the research and education environment to develop its educational collaboration with the business sector through competence-enhancing educational activities for working professionals. The programme also contributes by strengthening the relationship between academia and the business sector in areas related to the environment’s research orientations, thus contributing to profiling.