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Higher Education Systems and Institutions, Switzerland

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Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions

Expansion and Diversification of the Swiss Higher Education Sector

Being a small European country (around 8 million inhabitants in 2017), with a direct democracy and four national languages, Switzerland has been amongst the relatively poor countries in Europe until the nineteenth century and was long dominated by bordering countries. Today it is one of the richest and most attractive countries in Europe, with a high index of quality of life and a large share of foreigners in the population. The development of textile industry and technological transformations during the second industrial revolution at the end of the nineteenth century has been accompanied by the development of professional education and training between the 1880s and 1930s. The long focus on professional education and the economic and political debates it nurtured led to a relatively small size higher education sector.

Today’s higher education (HE) system takes its roots in the sixteenth century when a School of...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. OSPS, LACCUS, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland

    Gaële Goastellec

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  1. Gaële Goastellec
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Correspondence to Gaële Goastellec .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Jung Cheol Shin

  2. CIPES, Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Pedro Teixeira

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Goastellec, G. (2017). Higher Education Systems and Institutions, Switzerland. In: Shin, J., Teixeira, P. (eds) Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_389-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_389-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9553-1

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