List of universities and colleges in Sweden

This list of universities in Sweden is based on the Higher Education Ordinance of 1993. With few exceptions, all higher education in Sweden is publicly funded.
The Swedish higher education system differentiates between universitet and högskola. The universities are research-oriented and may award Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctor's degrees in many academic fields, whereas the högskolor usually are more focused on applied sciences, and only have limited rights granting doctor's degrees. Note, however, that some universities still call themselves högskola in Swedish, mainly older specialised institutions in engineering and medicine. Also, both proper universities and högskolor are translated to "university" in English, where in the latter case, some argue that "university college" would be more correct.

Public universities

The order of precedence is based on their year of establishment as a university. Only Uppsala University and Lund University were actually founded as universities, whereas all the other universities were raised from högskola status to the higher university status after they had been founded.
Two universities founded under Swedish rule, the University of Tartu from 1632 and the Royal Academy of Turku from 1640, as well as the University of Greifswald from 1456, are excluded from the list.

University	Established as a university	First establishment	Student population	Research grants
Uppsala University	1477	1477	18,347	4.112
Lund University	1666	1425	23,539	4.874
University of Gothenburg	1954	1891	21,121	3.446
Stockholm University	1960	1878	22,434	2.633
Karolinska Institutet	1965	1810	5,641	4.805
Umeå University	1965	1965	13,389	2.336
KTH Royal Institute of Technology	1970	1827	10,544	2.836
Linköping University	1975	1969	15,252	1.892
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences	1977	1775	3,515	2.083
Luleå University of Technology	1997	1971	6,509	0.857
Karlstad University	1999	1977	6,717	0.341
Örebro University	1999	1977	7,581	0.364
Mid Sweden University	2005	1993	5,946	0.371
Linnaeus University	2010	1967 / 1977	11,663	0.435
Malmö University	2018	1998	12,566	1.382

Public university colleges

A Högskola is an institution of higher education, similar to a university but typically smaller and with PhD-rights in fewer areas. The right to award doctoral degrees is in Sweden given and monitored by the Swedish Higher Education Authority in the same way for universities and university colleges. The public 'högskola' are:

Högskola	Established
Royal Institute of Art	1735
Royal College of Music, Stockholm	1771
University of Arts, Crafts and Design	1844
University of Borås	1977
Dalarna University	1977
Mälardalen University	1977
Kristianstad University	1977
University of Skövde	1977
Gävle University College	1977
Halmstad University	1983
Blekinge Institute of Technology	1989
University West	1990
Södertörn University	1996
Swedish Defence University	2008
Stockholm University of the Arts	2014

Private universities and högskolor

There are seven private institutions of higher education with the right to give post graduate degrees, namely:

''ARWU''

Ranking list according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities:

University	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Uppsala University	00	74	74	65	66	71	76	66	67	73	73	1000000
Lund University	00	92	92	90	97	97	101	104	109	114	112	1000000
University of Gothenburg	00	201	190	206	228	242	257	212	203	196	195	1000000
Stockholm University	00	97	97	84	86	86	88	79	81	81	82	1000000
Karolinska Institutet	00	46	46	48	53	51	50	42	44	42	44	1000000
Umeå University	00	248	252	253	256	256	252	249	247	274	289	1000000

In relation to their population size, Switzerland and Sweden are the two countries with the highest number of universities among the 100 best of the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

''QS World''

Ranked Swedish universities on QS World University Rankings :

Institution	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Chalmers University of Technology	223	202	175	132	139
University of Gothenburg	193	205	206	247	264
Linköping University	340	331	283	286	282
Lund University	70	67	60	70	73
KTH Royal Institute of Technology	142	118	110	92	97
Stockholm University	171	170	182	182	196
Uppsala University	81	79	81	102	98
Umeå University	297	289	267	319	294

''THE World''

Ranked Swedish institutes on Times Higher Education World University Rankings :

''THE-QS''

Ranking list according to the THE–QS World University Rankings :

Institution	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
Chalmers University of Technology	110	166	147	197	162	198
University of Gothenburg	-	190	-	-	258	185
Linköping University	-	-	-	371	-	-
Lund University	171	180	122	106	88	67
KTH Royal Institute of Technology	122	196	172	192	173	174
Stockholm University	139	-	-	246	239	215
Uppsala University	140	180	111	71	63	75
Umeå University	-	-	-	-	299	318