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For long the Norwegian vocational college was placed in the periphery of general system formation policies in education and remained a residual in technical education, based on praxis values and local support from industry. In 2003 the vocational college was extended to cover a wide range of institutions and programs and defined as a separate level in the educational structure. Recently, through the turn towards labour market relevance in education, the vocational colleges have experienced considerable political attention as well as increased public financing. Under their new name, higher vocational education, the colleges are now intended to provide employees without higher, academic education, with a stronger foothold in the labour market. Previous policy decisions on limiting the vocational college to level 5 in the national qualification framework are now being reconsidered. Organizational rationalization processes have furthermore strengthened the capabilities of the schools to engage in higher education programs. These developments may provide a new basis for the development of a practical higher educational pillar parallel to academic higher educational. ; publishedVersion

The differences and similarities among the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have been discussed by social scientists on several occasions. Focusing on higher education (HE) governance systems, this paper raises three questions. (1) What are the differences and similarities among the three countries? (2) How can the similarities and differences be explained? (3) Are the similarities strong enough to justify the common label of a Scandinavian model of HE governance? The three HE governance systems are briefly described and compared. They are then analyzed as, respectively, outcomes of partisan politics or politico‐administrative regimes. The paper argues that similarities such as publicness, massive investments, and emphasis on access are best explained in terms of partisan politics, while the variation in governance arrangements can best be explained by path dependencies following choices made at critical junctures within similar politico‐administrative regimes.