Funding of Progressive Education, 1891–1954: A Swedish Case

It is a well-known fact that several of the early progressive schools were privately, not publicly, funded. This has been observed in studies of progressive schools in, for instance, Japan and England. However, more specific analyses of the nature of this financing are rare. The overarching purpose of the article is to analyse and describe the funding of progressive private upper secondary schools (läroverk) through a case study including two schools in Gothenburg and Uppsala in the early 1900s. Using primary material, such as minutes from the annual meetings of shareholders and final accounts, a broader understanding of conditions and motives is accomplished. A combination of donations from local philanthropists, public funding, and student fees funded the schools. Gradually, the importance of philanthropic capital decreased. In addition, it also turned out that the schools were hardly driven by profit motives.


Introduction
It is a well-known fact that several of the early progressive schools were private and did not receive financing from public funds. This has been observed in studies of progressive schools in, for instance, the U.S., Germany, England, and Japan. At the same time as it has been established that the progressive schools were often privately funded, more extensive analyses of the nature of their financing and how it affected their operations are largely lacking. Instead, studies tend to focus on the pedagogical ideas included in accounts of progressive education, which means that the fundamental conditions for actually implementing it have not been thoroughly examined before. 1 The historical conditions in Sweden were similar regarding operations and financing, even though some progressive education was offered within the framework of mass schooling. We start out from economic history and education history research interested in mixed forms of financing of various types of services, organisations, and schools that existed alongside the emergence of the modern welfare society financed by taxes. This kind of mixed funding often included elements of non-profit funding, donations, share capital, and public funds. 2 To understand the financing of progressive education better, we follow the education history tradition of focusing on "The black box of schooling, " which means that we are primarily interested in the actual running of schools and how financial and operational issues were handled at the local level, rather than state regulations or public inquiries into the financing of particular schools. 3 We have focused on two upper secondary schools that were run as public limited companies (aktiebolag) with a strong financial position in the local context: Göteborgs högre samskola (1901) and Uppsala enskilda läroverk (1891). 4 The overall aim of the article is to analyse the funding of progressive private upper secondary schools. We will do this partly through describing the financing of private schools in Sweden, and partly through studying the funding of two progressive private schools in terms of operations and financing. Our research questions are the following: What were the different sources of funding for the private upper secondary schools? How did the sources of funding change over time? How did the funding relate to the local philanthropy of the city?
The period treated is . The selection of this period reflects changes in the way private upper secondary schools were funded, starting from a 1908/09 decision when the principles for this type of financing were determined. The decision stipulated that, in order to receive state funds, private upper secondary schools had to offer teaching based on new and modern ways of organising schools and education, among other things. 5 This is also a period of significant changes in the entire Swedish school system. A landmark decision about education design was made in 1950, which favoured a discontinuation of the segmented school system, but the execution of it would however be preceded by a trial period. 6 The idea was to collect material to find out how a new form of elementary school could best be organised. 7 We see this as an important turning point in terms of principles, since the standing of the private upper secondary schools as central and unique institutions for testing new methods and ways of organising education was no longer in place. 8 The article begins with an account of the context of the private upper secondary schools in terms of education history. Then follows a review of previous research and Peter Lang, 2012). Note that the book mainly looks at teaching and the character of the classroom. 4 "Samskola" was a coeducational upper secondary school for boys and girls studying together. Note also that "enskilda skolor" were the equivalent of private schools. In this context private schools is interpretated as schools owned and run by private actors. 5 See Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908. 6 For an explanation of the concept, see Figure 1. 7 SOU 1961:30, 1957års skolberedning 6 Grundskolan: betänkande (Stockholm, 1961, 52-3. 8 We will describe the role of the private upper secondary schools as experimental schools below. theoretical starting points, as well as a discussion of sources. The more empirical sections of the article are introduced by a descriptive overview of the position and role of private upper secondary schools in Sweden during the first half of the twentieth century. This is followed by an in-depth case study of two private upper secondary schools, Göteborgs högre samskola and Uppsala enskilda läroverk. The article concludes with a summary and discussion.

Background
Progressivism is a relatively broad phenomenon which usually designates various features of schooling and education that emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century. In Swedish and international debates on education, a number of more or less synonymous concepts are often used, such as for example "New Education" and "child-centred education. " 9 With reference to John Dewey, what was seen as a traditional and conservative society was critiqued more and more intensively around the turn of the twentieth century, at the same time as the role of education for creating a democratic and modern society was highlighted. 10 When defining progressivism, there are a few aspects of this movement that usually are stressed. Progressivism typically involved a holistic view of education and society; schools were supposed to change alongside societal change. Progressivism is also associated with the fundamental view that schools were based on democracy and that all citizens, regardless of class and gender, were to have the right to education. In addition, progressive teachers and educators usually agreed on a view of curricula and pedagogical organisation that allowed contemporary challenges and students' interests to play a decisive role in the planning and implementation of teaching. 11 In Sweden, the progressive reform movement gathered around ideas about the importance of local development through initiatives taken at particular schools. 12 It is also important to note that the creation of material and knowledge required for change was seen as part of the mission. Experiments, trials, and science were supposed to support reform, not tradition. 13 This view was partly shared by the authorities. In the early twentieth century, progressive upper secondary schools were granted government grants precisely for testing different methods, for example. Two of the upper secondary schools that received such grants are examined in the present article. At the same time, the progressive ambitions should be placed in a context that reveals the proportions of the contemporary school system, both in terms of the number of students and in terms of financing. In Sweden and internationally, nineteenth and early twentieth century school systems were segmented. Schools funded by local school districts, and increasingly by central government subsidies, provided a basic education for the masses, while the children of an elite attended schools that prepared them for higher education. The early twentieth century saw, however, reforms that attempted to strengthen mass schooling, which lead to higher enrolment and attendance rates. 14 The state funds allocated to mass schooling were also significantly lower in relation to the cost per student compared to the funding for upper secondary schools. The proportions vary between 1868 and the 1880s; initially the funds for upper secondary schools were three times the funds allocated to primary schools, despite the fact that the latter had more than a hundred times as many students, and during the 1880s state funding for an upper secondary school student was more than four times the funding for a primary school student. Between the world wars, the proportions in terms of funding were similar. 15 In this context, it should be added that, although the private upper secondary schools might have had a progressive profile, the excessive school reform was about the public upper secondary schools, which were not characterised by progressive ideals at this point in time. Rather, it can be said that as an institution it was characterised by obvious conservative features. There was a skepticism among many teachers towards a student-centered pedagogy, for example. Furthermore, there were formal links to conservative institutions such as the church. But at the same time, it is important to point out that the image of the upper secondary school as a traditional institution is not all black and white. 16 The private secondary schools under investigation were established in a time when women's democratic rights were limited. In Sweden, women were given the right to vote in 1919. This situation also involved women's access to education. Their chances of entering higher education were limited, for instance, and while it was primarily girls' schools that allowed females to receive education beyond elementary school, the girls' schools typically did not offer the baccalaureate degree. The public 14 Laurence Brockliss and Nicola Sheldon, Mass Education and the Limits of State Building, c. 1870-1930(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 -1911; 1851-1911, and funds allocated between the world wars are taken from sources included in Table 1 and information about the number of students in Gunnar Richardson, Svensk skolpolitik 1940-1945(Stockholm: Liber Förlag, 1978, 16-19. 16 Johan Samuelsson, Läroverken och progressivismen: Perspektiv på historieundervisningens praktik och policy 1920-1950  upper secondary schools were closed to females until 1927. However, girls were able to seek the baccalaureate as independent students. The issue of coeducational instruction was intensively investigated and discussed, and coeducational upper secondary schools turned out to be one way for women to get a degree. The private coeducational upper secondary schools served as pioneering schools in terms of coeducational instruction, even though there were also public coeducational schools. Generally speaking, these schools, girls' schools and coeducational schools, were aimed at an educated and financially stable social class. 17 The political and reform-related context of the schools that we study, that is, private coeducational schools, was thus an increasingly intense debate regarding women's rights to higher education, as well as a tradition of private schools where progressive ideals were typically explicit.  Note: a) In addition to the universities, there were also other institutions for higher education, such as the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and the medical university Karolinska Institutet, b) the elementary schools had a largely local organization and financing, c) in elementary school co-education was practiced for about six years, d) in 1870, women were given the right for a matriculation examination, which initially took place at the public upper secondary schools; around the turn of the century, some co-educational schools and upper secondary girls' schools also received graduation rights, but few women took the matriculation examination, e) from year 1874 the upper secondary girls 'schools received a small state subsidy, but were mainly financed by tuition fees, f) the upper secondary education lasted for nine years while the upper secondary girls' schools lasted for eight years, g) the upper secondary schools could have a private operating and were then called private upper secondary schools.  16-20. It should also be noted that the girls' schools can be seen as progressive in the sense that they provided girls with access to higher education. In these schools, it was not unusual to find a student-centred progressive pedagogy.

Previous research and theoretical background
A starting point for the study is that the establishment of different types of education should be related to social, economic, and cultural processes. This does not mean that government decisions and directives are unimportant, but that the emergence of different educational institutions must be related to local contexts. 18 This has affected the kind of previous research we have included here. However, there is also a lack of Swedish studies of private upper secondary schools, and of how their operations and funding affected education, which has influenced the choice of previous research. Therefore, we have chosen to base our study on two research areas. First, studies concerning financing of schools and other public activities. In particular, we have identified how mixed forms of financing have been present in many contexts. Second, studies that focus on philanthropy and its role in funding school and education.
Research has noted how various forms of education, which were largely dependent on private efforts, are characterised by the way in which they based their activities on the support of several different sources of funding. 19 For instance, Johannes Westberg's study of the development of preschool pedagogy in Sweden includes an analysis of sources of income between 1845 and 1943 which shows that the activities were funded by various revenues of different kinds: municipal funds, donations, interests, fees, and events. 20 Westberg states that it is possible to accomplish a new and broader explanation of the emergence of mass schooling through a detailed analysis of the school building process. He sees that the financing and planning of the construction involved regional actors of various kinds such as the regional credit market. However, construction was also dependent on monetary and non-monetary taxation at the local level, although the proportion of non-monetary taxation gradually decreased. 21 Other Swedish studies have also found that funding for the school could involve a number of different sources. In a study of private contributions to elementary school, Michaëlsson identifies financing from school districts, government grants, businesses, student fees, donations, gifts, and wills. 22 An analysis of the financing of teacher salaries around the turn of the century 1800 in the then Helvetic Republic, now Switzerland, also demonstrates that there were several sources of income. 23 Similar conclusions have been reported regarding the American context; in a study of local education markets in New York 1815-1850, Nancy Beadie shows that activities were funded through gifts, labour, donated material, and voluntary subscriptions. 24 However, this funding model was not unique to the school. Other activities that we would usually regard as public today were also based on a form of mixed funding. For example, bathhouses with saunas were built in the early twentieth century through a system of mixed funding which included the builders' own labour, fund assets, and some public aid. Yet another example concerns museums, as private donations were key components of their funding. Previous studies indicate that there were strong local networks of donors, contributing financially, in the cultural sphere particularly. 25 Military activities also benefited from a form of mixed financing comprised of private and public funds, through non-governmental organisations such as "Landsstormen. " 26 We are mainly interested in the management and organisation of schools, but it can be noted that the debate on how various kinds of services should be managed and organised has been going on for a long time.
Especially, in one of the cities, a local donation culture with elements of philanthropy came to play a role when the school was initiated. In short, we want to say something about this phenomenon. Philanthropy research has noted that the social and material context of a donation is key to understanding the motivation behind philanthropic contributions. This approach may reveal that the conditions for making donations are different for saunas compared to philanthropic acts in the domain of welfare. Interrelations between different actors can therefore suggest various motives for a donation: the desire to appear as a responsible and influential person, the positive effect of a boost in self-confidence on the part of the donor, or the opportunity to enjoy a self-image of oneself as a person so dignified and capable that others expect contributions to groups and causes in need. 27 Previous studies also show that there were regional differences regarding donations and philanthropy. In Gothenburg, for example, funds that supported education were larger than in other cities. This can be understood in relation to the character of the city's financial elite which was markedly liberal. 28 In summary, we want to highlight some aspects from previous research that we see as important when we are to understand the establishment of private schools. An explanation that has been suggested for the multiple sources of income is that the early schools, like cultural institutions, depended on social capital; in other words, their funding mirrored the surrounding local network. 29 Lately, researchers have begun to offer a broader picture of the historical conditions that underpin a school system. Westberg, for instance, shows that a great number of social, economic, and cultural processes enabled the construction of new school buildings. 30 From this per-24 Nancy Beadie, "Tuition Funding for Common Schools, " Social Science History 32 (2008) spective, several factors can have a simultaneous impact, such as governmental regulations, the labour of unpropertied workers, changes on the credit market, and a growing population. Through this type of analysis, more of the contemporary structures that were required to secure resources for activities can be identified. Our starting point is that this multi-factor model of explanation is relevant for the private upper secondary schools as well. They responded to a need for alternative pedagogy and coeducational instruction, but practical solutions at the local level were dependent on a number of different factors such as for instance educational traditions, access to networks, and the potential presence of a culture of philantrophy.

Method and material
For this study, we have selected private upper secondary schools in Swedish cities with different traits. 31 We wanted to select upper secondary schools where we initially judged that there was a relatively substantial amount of material available for the period of time examined in the study. Moreover, we selected two upper secondary schools that were founded before the governmental funding of private upper secondary schools was formalised in 1908. The reason for this was that we wanted to be able to trace the development of the schools before and after the introduction of the government grant. It was furthermore important for us to be able to find reasonably similar source material, and that the archives were relatively accessible.
As a result, we selected two schools, one located in Uppsala and the other in Gothenburg. Uppsala is a typical university town with one of Sweden's oldest, and around the turn of the century 1900 by far the largest, university. At the time, Uppsala University had more than 1,400 students, while Lund University, the second largest, had around 600. 32 The town of Uppsala was characterised by students and student associations to a great extent. Around the turn of the 20th century, the share of female students was still negligible, but this began to change a decade or so later. Uppsala also had industries, such as for instance Ekeby Bruk which produced bricks, as well as food, textile, and manufacturing industries. Gothenburg, on the other hand, can be seen as a town characterised by engineering industries and trade. Companies such as SKF, Ostindiska Kompaniet, and Götaverken, together with the textile industry, constituted important industries. 33 Gothenburg at the time had an institute of technology, Chalmers, with more than 300 students.
When it comes to sources, there have also been some limitations in the material that have influenced the focus of our study. The ways in which the private upper secondary schools handled bookkeeping and reporting on financial management were examined already in the 1920s. In 1925, it was investigated how the financial management of private upper secondary schools could be made more transparent and uniform, among other things. The investigation discovered problems so severe that it even produced suggestions for templates that could be used for financial reporting. The investigators also highlighted the fact that it was generally difficult in many cases 31 See below for a more detailed account of the motives for selecting upper secondary schools for this study. to comprehend on what grounds profits and losses were reported. In addition, it was noted that many school companies reported expenditures and revenues on unclear grounds, and some information was described as "misleading. " 34 The lack of transparency in financial reporting is also reflected in the archives of the upper secondary schools included in the present study. The source material is certainly relatively extensive, but the character of the material varies over time, and also between the two archival collections. The material that we have used comprises annual reports, minutes from board meetings, audit reports, directors' reports, lists of shareholders and company statutes, and these provide a picture of funding and operations that features certain gaps, since access to the different categories of material has varied. One example of something that has made it difficult to trace the development of funding over time is the lack of directors' reports for the entire period. In Gothenburg, there are for instance no directors' reports from the early part of the period, while they are available for the latter part. In the Uppsala town archives, there are no directors' reports that include financial reporting. We have been forced to supplement our sources with newspapers and anniversary books in some cases when there have been gaps in the specifically economic material. In sum, we have had to use a mix of sources and partly approach them as a jigsaw puzzle.
Since we are interested in finding out what types of groups and actors invested, donated, and in other ways contributed to the founding and early activities of the schools, we have also used material that can relatively simply provide a picture of the backgrounds of various financial supporters. For reasons of delimitation, we have not studied their economic and social standing closely in this context. It would have been possible to use inventories of property and tax calendars, for example, for a more in-depth survey. We have decided, however, to draw attention to professional titles and find support mainly in general overviews and biographical material. This approach has contributed to a broad general picture of their social position.

Private upper secondary schools between 1900-1950: Experimental activities in a traditional framework
In order to better understand the funding and operation of private upper secondary schools, we will first consider their role in the Swedish school system at a more general national level. In Sweden, like in other countries, private upper secondary schools were progressive nodes of sorts by the turn of the century 1900. These upper secondary schools usually catered to an affluent middle class, which turned out to be significant for the general development of upper secondary schools during the first half of the twentieth century. Their role for the dissemination and establishment of progressive education has been discussed in research interested in various types of networks. 35 It is important to note that the schools we study here were thus not part of the broad mass education. It should also be noted that even from an international perspective, the middle class was attracted to progressive schools. In Sweden, the private upper secondary schools played a particular role in the history of Swedish education. In the late nineteenth century, these schools were increasingly present in public debates on the government grants issued to schools. These discussions foregrounded the role of the private upper secondary schools as reformers of pedagogy, but the issue of funding was also debated. In 1908, a government bill was proposed which clarified what types of private schools were eligible for government grants, namely municipal middle schools, girls' upper secondary schools, and, indeed, private upper secondary schools. The conditions for receiving grants were also specified. For grants to be issued, it was suggested that schools had to offer some form of experimental pedagogy, and this was ratified in the 1908 government bill. As has been mentioned above, "new forms and methods of teaching" were important to these upper secondary schools. 37 It was assumed that "new work plans and teaching methods could be tested and evaluated in practice" at these schools. Furthermore, the bill emphasised that experiences from upper secondary schools should also "benefit the public upper secondary schools. " 38 It was seen as significant with such experience and such knowledge whether or not the experiments were successful. Failed trials could be "dismissed from the discussion of pedagogy, " but if proven useful, they deserved "further application in state schools as well. " 39 The practical experiences achieved at private upper secondary schools were thus seen as potentially beneficial for the entire school system, which was an argument in favour of extending the government grant. However, this required experimental activities to go on "at a large enough scale, over a long enough time, " which justified grants allocated to upper secondary schools in accordance with the government bill. 40 The assumption that it was the private upper secondary schools that would contribute to development was based on the idea that they "were driven to it out of the heat and excitement of conviction. " 41 Moreover, this type of school also had greater opportunities than the public upper secondary schools to modify their organisation and teaching, and to pick their own staff.
Examples of private upper secondary schools that were associated with pedagogical reform during this period included, among others, schools where boys and girls were educated together, such as Sofi Almqvists samskola and Palmgrenska samskolan in Stockholm, Stockholms nya samskola, Göteborgs högre samskola, Djursholms samskola, Lundsbergs internatskola, Whitlockska samskolan as well as Uppsala enskilda läroverk. 42 The private upper secondary schools in Sweden around this time had certain social ambitions in the sense that many of them were coeducational and thus welcomed female students. At the same time, they were hardly schools for the lower rungs of society. The steep tuition fees presented an effec-37 Sigurd Åstrand and Alice Kollén, Två studier av pedagogiska pionjärinsatser (Uppsala: Föreningen för svensk undervisningshistoria, 1985); Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908, 45. 38 Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908, 42. 39 Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908, 42. 40 Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908, 42, 49. 41 Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908 There were, however, a few schools for boys on scholarships, such as for instance Beskowska skolan in Stockholm, Fjellstedtska skolan in Uppsala, Lunds privata elementarskola and Eslöfs enskilda elementarskola för gossar. See Åstrand and Kollén (1985), 20-3;Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908, 55-6 and 171. tive obstacle for lower-income students. The schools that we study, Göteborgs högre samskola and Uppsala enskilda läroverk, do not constitute exceptions in that regard. What types of experiments did the private upper secondary schools conduct, then? They could for instance involve intensive study of single subjects and interdisciplinary study, but also a greater share of practical and student-driven components in teaching. Furthermore, there were examples of trying to organise the progression from one level of schooling to another in new ways. 43 The significance of such trials was also confirmed by the education authorities. When the Board of Education commented on the concrete traits of the experimental upper secondary schools, the main idea was "that they in terms of certain details of the organisation or curriculum or in relation to the methodology of certain subjects deviated considerably from other schools of equivalent kind; and it could not be denied that such deviations often constituted valuable experiments. " 44 In other words, the school authorities and the politicians were in agreement regarding the role of the experimental upper secondary schools in the Swedish school system.
During the first half of the twentieth century, the private upper secondary schools were a controversial form of schooling discussed in public inquiries. However, this discussion was rarely linked to specific ideological standpoints. It was rather a question of the views of individual members of parliament, for example regarding the size of the grant allocated to this type of school. 45 In inquiries such as the 1918 school commission and government bills from the late 1920s, even though the number of private upper secondary schools was discussed, their existence as such was never threatened. It was yet again emphasised, though, that their role in the school system was to conduct pedagogical experiments. They were therefore considered important for the development of the public upper secondary schools as well. 46 The need for experimental activities in upper secondary schools was stated again in the 1936 report by experts on teacher education which was published in 1938. 47 In one of the main Swedish school inquiries, the 1946 school commission, the idea of a so-called experimental upper secondary school, intended to test new reforms, remained. For instance, it was suggested that particular upper secondary schools of this experimental kind were to be established. 48 In the report itself, there were some references to experiences of experimental activities in private upper secondary schools, more specifically trials with a third programme of study alongside the "Latin" programme and the "Real" programme. 49 The "modern languages" programme was intended to be somewhat more general and incorporate connections to 43 Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908, 172-3. 44 Kungl. Maj:ts Nåd. Proposition N:o 163, 1908 1927, 205-12. 47 SOU 1938:50, 1936års lärarutbildningssakkunniga (Stockholm: Nord. Bokh, 1938, 224ff. 48 Minutes from the commission, April 25 1946, FIII, vol. 1. Skolkommissionen 1946-1952 In the "Real" programme (Reallinjen), the studies were focused on science and mathematics. the modern social sciences in addition to the modern languages. 50 Even though the private upper secondary schools, in the shape of experimental schools, were expected to play a role in the school system of the future, a general reorganisation of the reform politics was now proposed. Not only the private upper secondary schools were now considered as "experimental workshops. " In the school commission, the entire school system was talked about as involved in a continually ongoing process of reform, and it was suggested that the experiments should be an integrated part of the ordinary school activities. 51 In 1950, a decision was made in principle to introduce a mandatory, uniform primary school. This change was implemented through a largescale systematic experimental project. Through these decisions, the unique position of private upper secondary schools in the Swedish school system was undermined. The period around 1900-1950 can be described as a kind of golden age for the private upper secondary schools in their role as experimental workshops, which in turn justified the government grants that they received.

Institutional framework and general financing model
There were certain requirements that the private upper secondary schools had to fulfil in order to receive government grants, for instance in relation to wage-setting rules. Schools run by limited companies (aktiebolag) were subject to auditing and financial control in accordance with the regulations pertaining to such companies. Thus, these schools were subject to the Companies Act.
Depending on area of activity, supplementary directives could be added, which regulated the organisation and management of the limited company. The directives could for instance be about specific demands on the size of the basic funds, mandatory report to the King's commander, and special regulations concerning board and management. When the operations included deposits and lending, there were also special rules; for instance, a maximum duration of loans of ten years, and a requirement that the limited company keeps a ledger, a settlement book, a loan book, a register of the debtors, and a capital account. It was also not allowed for principals and board members to serve as officers in an organisation where deposits and lending took place. 52 After some time, the rules pertaining to the operation and organisation of schools were clarified. For example, it was decided that state representatives had to be present on the board of directors in school companies. How schools were supposed to report to the authorities was also gradually formalised. In accounts submitted to the authorities, schools were for example supposed to describe how teaching was conducted, how many hours of instruction the students received, what the classrooms were like in terms of material standard, and so on. As a kind of early performance management, schools were also to report final grades to the authorities. 53 Despite the fact that they were private upper secondary schools, there were rules and requirements that had to be observed for them to receive government grants. 50 SOU 194850 SOU :27, 1946  An important part of the role of the private upper secondary schools in the Swedish school system was to test new ways of organising and conducting teaching. The state issued government grants to the schools if they could meet these demands, but as shown in Table 1 below, their role in the state education budget was relatively small. In Table 1, we present government grants issued to the various types of schools in existence during the period that we study. The overview is based on the government's budget bills. Please note that there was an extra grant issued for female teachers working in the private upper secondary schools.  1913, 1920, 1930; 1940, 1950, 1960 and 1970  If we focus on the private upper secondary schools only, the central government expenditure was small in relation to the public upper secondary schools. If we combine private upper secondary schools and secondary girls' schools, we get a slightly different picture. The private alternatives then received around 10 percent of the budget for higher education (that is, schools other than elementary school) in the early part of the period. Over the period of time that we study, their share of the total budget for higher education decreases. This decrease coincides with their changing role in the Swedish school system alongside the introduction of major reforms between the wars. We cannot say if this was a result of experimental activities of a different character after 1950. However, there was not a strong public opinion against the private upper secondary schools, and for example among leading Social Democrats there was a very positive attitude towards certain private schools. 56 A 1950 overview shows that there were two main forms of ownership for private upper secondary schools. Foundations were a common form, and an example of a foundation school is Palmgrenska skolan in Stockholm. The most common form of ownership was a limited company, and Göteborgs högre samskola is one out of nine examples. 57 When the issue of teacher salaries in the private schools-that is, girls' schools, private upper secondary schools, and private middle schools-was investigated in the 1940s, there was a discussion of the financing of schools. According to the inquiry, student fees, amounting to more than 40 percent, constituted the largest source of income, followed by government grants that provided an almost equally significant part of the total funding. Municipal grants covered a little less than 20 percent. 58 The composition of the funding for private upper secondary schools is of particular interest to us, but apart from these numbers, no other data are available. We have also not been able to find that there were any other ways of financing the schools. In our two case studies, we will be able to provide a slightly more nuanced picture.

Uppsala enskilda läroverk under construction 1891-1901
On 7 December 1891, an advertisement was published presenting the Limited Company Uppsala enskilda läroverk as a company in the early days of construction. 59 The advertisement was formulated as a call inviting readers to subscribe for shares in the company and included a general presentation of the focus of its activities: to teach children from the early years until the baccalaureate degree with a great emphasis on moral education, and as far as possible through coeducational instruction. The call was signed by persons who had previously made a name for themselves through participating in debates on pedagogy, for instance in discussions regarding the idea of coeducational schooling. 60 The formulations in this first call were soon to be discussed intensely among the founders of the upper secondary school, and they were critiqued among other things for being too vague. Despite this criticised lack of clarity concerning the particular character of the school, the original call indicates clearly that it was a school with a reform profile, not least since the vision of a coeducational institution was explicitly stated.
During the period between the call in December 1891 and May 1892, private citizens subscribed for shares in the new school company equivalent to more than 20,000 SEK. A majority subscribed for shares worth 100-200 SEK, but a handful of shareholders also subscribed for 400-600 SEK, and a few people invested 1 000 SEK. 61 The founders had made clear already in the first advertisement that the shareholders could not count on a profit during the first few years, but instead emphasised the need for a new and supplementary upper secondary school in Uppsala.
The shareholders can be categorised as a broadly defined middle class including representatives from trade and authorities as well as academia; the list of attendees for the first meeting in the company includes for example building contractors, 57  senior officials, and booksellers as well as professors, associate professors, and persons with a Ph.D., see Table 2. Several important decisions were made during the first meeting, among other things that all votes were going to be related to the amount of subscribed capital. The fact that influence was determined by subscribed capital is hardly surprising, but in this case there was a partly reversed relationship between the amount of invested economic capital and influence over the future activities; among the most influential actors were persons who had subscribed for shares equivalent to the lowest amount of capital. 63 Professor Johan August Lundell is considered the founder of the upper secondary school and also seen as the most influential person in relation to its operations over the first three decades, but as can be seen in Table 2, he only subscribed for shares worth 100 SEK. Lundell was a professor of Slavic languages at Uppsala University, and also played a prominent role in the contemporary debate on pedagogy. Among other things, he held a central position in the reform society Quesque tandem and argued publicly for reform in the area of language education. Lundell was an active writer with progressive ideas, and his writings were often published, for instance in the pedagogy journal Verdandi. 64 Another professor, Adolf Noreen, was present for the first meeting and he too subscribed for the lowest recorded sum of 100 SEK (see Table 2). 65 During the meeting, Noreen expressed his concern that the proposed upper secondary school was only going to be a reform school in theory. He presented animated arguments for developing the progressive components more explicitly already from the beginning, for example in relation to coeducational instruction, and questioned why such instruction was planned for the primary school level only. A possible explanation why the influence of the professors was comparatively significant in relation to their subscribed capital could be that they instead controlled considerable educational resources. 66 Uppsala enskilda läroverk was founded, then, in the form of a limited company, and over the first year another hundred or so shareholders subscribed, typically for one or two shares worth 100 SEK each. 67 These shareholders were not listed with titles neither in the minutes from meetings nor in the bookkeeping, which makes it difficult to assess their social position in the same way that the list of attendees for the first meeting enabled us to do.
As has been mentioned above, the progressive profile of the upper secondary school was expressed already in the first call to subscribe for shares and it was discussed intensely at the very first meeting. In later meetings and subsequent advertisements as well, the progressive ideas were explicitly stated. In an initial advertising campaign carried out to recruit students, it was highlighted that the balance between the students' physical and spiritual health was going to be approached with utmost care. Moreover, there was information about the coeducational profile and it was declared that the students' individual development was going to be a special priority. The advertisement emphasised that arts and crafts were going to be mandatory components, and that teachers were going to use so-called improved teaching methods both in language teaching and in other subjects. 68 A summary of the fundamental ideas about pedagogy that were communicated and widely used for marketing the upper secondary school indicates the following: practical schoolwork was given considerable weight, while the theoretical aspects of teaching were not explicitly foregrounded in the same way. In marketing materials, it was continually emphasised that the school applied so-called modern methods. 69 Through looking at the initial marketing and advertising, it is possible to show that the recruitment of students to the upper secondary school was expected to happen both locally and nationally, and that the student fees were the same regardless of place of residence. Advertising in national press differed from that in local papers, for instance in terms of a more detailed overview of the board and a thorough presentation of it, information about accommodation in Uppsala, and more detailed descriptions of the subjects taught. In the local advertisements, there was also information about preschool, which was lacking in the national campaign. First-year students paid a fee of 20 SEK per semester, second-year students 30 SEK, and third-and fourth-year students 40 SEK per semester. The advertisements also explained that the fourth year was equivalent to the first year in a public upper secondary school. Already from the first semester, the limited company had an organisation for assigning students from other parts of the country lodging and suitable accommodation in Uppsala. In the national advertising campaign, names of contact persons for housing were also included. The reason why the board wanted the school to be marketed also outside Uppsala was twofold. It was partly a question of ensuring an influx of applicants, and partly an explicit desire to disseminate the progressive ideas more broadly. 70 Already in the first advertisements, the ambition to take students all the way to a degree in the "Latin" programme or the "Real" programme was expressed. It was, however, not until 1901 that the upper secondary school was given the right to award degrees. The anniversary book Uppsala enskilda läroverk 1901-1960 describes the problem of wanting to start a reform upper secondary school where degree-awarding powers were a precondition for attracting a sufficient number of students for the activities to be economically viable. Indeed, the struggle to achieve degree-awarding powers caused discussions on the board of directors and among the teaching staff about adapting the teaching to make it more similar to traditional upper secondary school, for instance in terms of longer semesters and less individualisation. A conflict which was on the one hand about the progressive profile of the school and on the other hand about the coveted right to award degrees was therefore contingent on financial circumstances. 71

Mixed funding
During the first few years, the funding of the upper secondary school in Uppsala was mixed. It was made up of a foundational resource of share capital and of student fees. The latter amounted to around 2 500 SEK the first year of operation, and then than sum was doubled for a full academic year. Over the first five years of operation, the tuition fees made up a more or less constant share of the funding. On the expenditure side, the main costs concerned salaries and rental of premises, but also furniture, teaching materials, and cleaning. 72 In the written records of the school, around fifty bonds per year are noted in the ledgers for the years 1893-1895. The accounts show that these were basic promissory notes of 75-375 SEK each where the limited company was the debtor and the creditors were listed alphabetically, but without titles. The limited company paid most of the debts as the finances turned increasingly solid, but up until 1895 they constituted an important aspect of financing the operating activities. Around one in ten bonds was waived without reimbursement, which can be interpreted as indicating that what was initially a loan was later turned into a donation. Yet another source of income was interest on loans granted, which comprised around 10 percent of the revenue. In sum, the total funding was distributed as follows: 40 percent was made up of student fees, 50 percent of borrowed capital, and 10 percent of revenue accrued from interest. 73 The limited company was dissolved on 29 October, 1898, and two months later the operations were taken over by Sällskapet Upsala Enskilda Läroverk. This change had been preceded by several divisions of the school, for instance into a technical college and a private upper secondary school, respectively. The outcome of such divisions was that activities were dispersed to various buildings in Uppsala, and that each one had their own bookkeeping. This in turn means that the grounds for studying the funding of Uppsala enskilda läroverk as a singular unit are no longer in place. 74 However, we will also make a minor supplement of material from the 1930s found in the archives of Göteborgs högre samskola.

Göteborgs högre samskola
When Göteborgs högre samskola-an upper secondary co-education school-was founded, Gothenburg was a quite different city than Uppsala. Gothenburg was, after Stockholm but before Uppsala, a leading city of philanthropy around the turn of the century 1900. There was a long tradition of contributing to the cultural and educational institutions of the city among affluent middle-class groups. 75 Apart from the state funded secondary schools, several private schools had already been established in the city, primarily girls' schools. 76 There was also around 72 Ledgers 1892-1895. G1a, vol. 1. UTP, UMA. On 10 December, 1894, the board decided to establish a vocational school for household economics which was going to start in the spring semester of 1895, see Minutes from the meeting on this date, A1a, vol.  Kyle (1972), 38-50;118-30. 1900 a local debate on the limited number of students that could be educated in upper secondary schools in the city, and a discussion regarding the need of a new upper secondary school. In addition, the large class sizes in upper secondary schools were highlighted. It was pointed out that there was a significant shortage of well-educated girls in Gothenburg, a trading city risking stagnation if the commercial sector did not have access to a sufficiently large workforce. In the article, it was defined as unreasonable that girls who wanted further education had to pay for expensive private lessons, and it was also noted that coeducational instruction was a good way of organising their education. However, the problem remained a year later, and in 1901 there was a call in the papers where interested persons were offered to subscribe for shares in a planned reform school for "boys and girls, " initiated by upper secondary school lecturer P. G. Laurin, among others. Laurin was an associate professor in mathematics and a lecturer at the Latin upper secondary school in Gothenburg. 77

Progressivism as marketing
The call can be regarded as a form of advertisement for subscription for shares and the school itself. Interest in the school could surely have been created in other ways than through the local papers, for instance through social networks, but the press was chosen as a forum for attracting people who would like to invest in a school. What kind of selling point was used, then? The key message was an explicitly progressive view of schooling and pedagogy. Teaching was to be conducted in coeducational form by male and female teachers. In addition, there was an emphasis on the secondary school in the next stage that was planned to be open to female students wanting to complete a degree. The small class sizes were also highlighted. 78 As for the stance on knowledge and education, it was seen as important for students to acquire a holistic view of various areas of knowledge. The various subject courses were going to be "rid of a lot of less important details. " In this way, more extensive adaptation to the interests and talents of individual students was possible to manage. Received knowledge was still important, but a more educational perspective on teaching indicated that such knowledge would be enhanced as well through a greater focus on procedural knowledge.
Apart from the organisation and implementation of teaching itself, it was important to have an active and creative teaching staff, and this is obvious when studying the first years after the founding of the school. A great interest in pedagogical conversations and school development is visible in anniversary books and contemporary archival material, for instance, and the teachers organised study groups focused on current societal and educational issues. 79 77 Paul J G Laurin, https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/artikel/11093, Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (article by Karl Englund), accessed September 10, 2021. 78 Högre samskola i Göteborg, " Göteborgsposten, February 4, 1901. (Author and page number are missing), see also Göteborgs högre samskola 1901-1911: minnesskrift (Göteborg: Gumpert, 1911), 1-9. 79 Meeting minutes, February 5 1902. A5, vol. 1. Gothenburg co-educational upper secondary school (GES), Regional Archive for region Vest and the City of Gothenburg (RARV); Göteborgs högre samskola (1911). It is not possible to draw very confident conclusions about the ways in which teaching was conducted based on the anniversary books that the schools themselves produced, but this school and other schools at least wanted to promote an image of themselves as progressive and modern schools.

Gothenburg donors, operations and funding the first few years
Ideas about the education offered at the school can in many ways be seen as part of a progressive movement in relation to the organisation and implementation of teaching, and this was obviously an important aspect of the marketing of the planned school since it was explicitly stated in the published call. However, the call also made clear that people were invited to subscribe for shares in the school company. It was also possible to make economic contributions to the school. It was hoped that the school in this way would accumulate a total of 50,000 SEK, and this goal was also reached relatively soon. 80 Who subscribed for shares in what was later established as the Limited Company Göteborgs högre samskola? If we look at documents listing shareholders and those who signed the call, we find a group of affluent citizens, mainly with connections to Gothenburg. 81 We can see that several of the persons (and families) that subscribed contributed to what economic historian Arthur Attman called the "spirit of philanthropy" in Gothenburg. Studies show that a number of wealthy Gothenburg residents were engaged in various causes in the city through donations. Among those who subscribed for shares in the future limited company were for instance Erik Wijk, Gerd and Gustav Ekman, Fredrik Heyman, Carolina Röhss, Emely and George Dickson, Fiedler & Lundgren, Ivar Waern and Pontus Fürstenberg. The Ekmans, Wijks, and Waerns were at the time extremely wealthy families known to have liberal values. They honored a tradition of making donations to and investing in the cultural life of the city, but they also invested money in education. The Ekman family, for instance, gave contributions to Sigtunas humanistiska läroverk and an agricultural college in the western Götaland region. Göteborgs högskola also received gifts from the Ekmans, and they supported higher education in Stockholm as well. The rightwing manufacturer Melcher Lyckholm was another well-known benefactor in the city. 82 Yet another famous Gothenburg family that participated in the establishment of the upper secondary school through signing the call and buying shares was the Mannheimer family, first through Charlotte Mannheimer and then Otto Mannheimer. Table 3 shows who the main shareholders were. 80 Laurin (2021  On 24 April, 1901, the limited company Göteborgs högre samskola arranged its first constitutional meeting. The first article established that the company was a coeducational school for boys and girls. In the same article, and in line with progressive ideas about education, it was stated that the study periods were to be limited in such a way that physical development could be combined with theoretical study. The first board of directors included persons who were shareholders in the company, among them Otto Mannheimer, J. J. Gibson, P. G. Laurin,and Gerda Ekman. 83 The board housed representatives from the wealthy families of the city, but also members with knowledge of schooling and education.

Donations and student fees in a financing model
When it comes to the funding and operation of activities over the first few years, there are considerable gaps in the source material. There are for instance no financial statements or audit reports in the archives for the early period. Materials with slightly more systematic information exist starting from 1926 in the form of directors' reports. 84 Not until the 1930s were audit reports kept that provide a clear overview of revenue and operating expenditure. Starting from the 1930s, then, it is relatively easy to find out in detail how the school was funded and managed. We will return to this below. However, some material makes it possible to make reasonably qualified estimates of the way in which the school was run and funded during the pioneering years. It is also possible to find out about the significance of local philanthropy in Gothen-83 Certificate of registration from the Patent Office, December 23 1901, with related articles of association, dated 24 April 1901 Compare this with our line of reasoning in the methods and sources section regarding gaps in the financial accounts of the private upper secondary schools. Concerning directors' reports, see Directors' report 1926-1927 burg. The material that we have used consists of the meeting minutes of the board of directors at the school. In these documents, the board discussed everything from the importance of teachers leading school development and the purchase of desks from Nääs manufacturers to recruitment issues. Operations and funding were treated, although no financial accounts were enclosed. It was noted, however, when a major contribution was donated by the owners or other benefactors. 85 Another material that we have used to form an idea of financial matters comprises the annual reports of the school. 86 The overview below is based on these sources. When we give an account of expenditure, we report major expenditures. Please note that it has not been possible to find further information in the material beyond the number of teachers. We have therefore made general estimates of wage costs based on average salaries. For student revenues, we have estimated an average value calculated on 120 SEK per student and semester. We have done so in order to be able to estimate overall costs and revenues.  It is possible to discern a financing model for 1902 in which student fees and donations were important parts. In the expenditure column, the actual construction of the school has not been included. Donations were also bestowed in the form of gifts. These mainly involved school materials such as books, desks, artworks, and libraries. Many of them were included in the annual report as gifts from "friends of the school. " 88 During the initial stage, the school also received donations in the form of money to cover minor repairs and other unspecified expenditures. The material does not reveal how often donors had to supply funds, but in anniversary books and meeting minutes it is pointed out that donors gave the school money recurrently. When we investigated who did so, we found that it was primarily shareholders and also well-known Gothenburg-based donors from families like the Mannheimers, Wijks,Magnus,and Heymans. 89 In sum, we can see that the school was initially managed and funded to a great extent by a local "philanthropic elite" in possession of liberal values and plenty of capital. The individuals and families that invested in the school were generally greatly engaged in societal issues. Donations were given partly as money, and partly as concrete gifts of various kinds. It is difficult to estimate the monetary value of these gifts, but they were considered significant enough for inclusion in the annual report of the school. 90 It is obvious that local philanthropy played an important role for the initial formation of the school, but it is hard to assess its significance for the actual operations. As mentioned above, contributions intended to cover operational costs were sometimes given by persons associated with the board of directors. At the same time, the sums of those contributions are relatively small compared to the revenues accrued through student fees.

Funding 1930-1954, a brief overview
As we have seen in the section on the development of private upper secondary schools at the national level, the government started issuing grants to private schools in the early 1900s. 91 We have chosen to look more closely once again at a moment in time for which we have almost identical source materials for the two upper secondary schools in our study. The sources connected to Uppsala enskilda läroverk are particularly deficient for later periods, but an account of its operations during one year in the 1930s existed in Gothenburg. It seems reasonable to assume that the schools had some kind of exchange where the issue of financial accounts was a part. As these two local examples clearly illustrate, the private upper secondary schools progressed from basing their financing model on student fees and the contributions of local philanthropists to largely separating the donors from the actual operations of the school and replacing their support with public funds. Alongside this development, the early owners mainly retained their operational power. If we look at Göteborgs högre samskola, Hjalmar Wijk and Carl Mannheimer (chair) were for example still on the board of directors in 1934. One of the founders of a trust associated with the school, the Louise Magnus trust, was also represented through Erik Magnus, the deputy auditor. 92 We have no material for Uppsala from the 1950s, but we will let Göteborgs högre samskola represent the 1950s through a look at the year 1954. The financing model was probably relatively constant until the 1950s, although a considerable change was that the share of the total funding made up of student fees decreased sharply at the same time as the government grants and municipal funding to cover operational costs became increasingly more important. 93 Source: Inventory with balance sheet. G7, vol. 3. GES, RARV. The "other revenues" mainly comprise income from a building that was rented out.
Teacher salaries remained the largest expenditure, costing the school 650,000 SEK in 1954. Some changes can be seen concerning who were involved in the school, even though we have not been able to find complete information about who were members of the board in 1954. We can see in anniversary books that for the first time in 1945 the school appointed as chairman of the board someone who had moved to Gothenburg and probably did not have any links to the local culture of philanthropy, the Finnish-Swedish literary scholar and journalist Henning Söderhjelm. Söderhjelm succeeded Carl Mannheimer, although there were probably still board members who had been around since the foundational years. 94

State and local capital working together
Recent reports that have attracted a great deal of attention prove that studying the funding and ownership of private schools can be challenging. However, studies in education history, such as the present article, show that this is not a new phenomenon by any means. In the concluding discussion, we will first highlight a few important results, and then as a final point return to the question of challenges that have been identified in relation to the historical study of funding for private schools. Previous research on the establishment and development of schools has shown that a number of different sources of revenue, such as municipal funds, donations, fees, and events, were important. 95 This is supported by our two case studies. We can see changes over time in the sense that the private upper secondary schools become increasingly dependent on public funding to cover operational costs, even though there are gaps in the source material. The period that we study is usually seen as the emergence of the strong welfare society, which includes the idea of an increasingly wide-ranging public responsibility for education. It is worth noting that the private upper secondary schools that were founded around the turn of the century 1900 in fact became less dependent on the financial goodwill of residents in their respective cities, at the same time as their reliance on public funding grows. In practice, however, the private upper secondary schools, both our two cases and similar schools nationally, actually retained a form of mixed funding for operational costs throughout the entire period of study. At the same time, the original founders kept their influence through being involved on the board of directors, at least at one of the schools in our study.
The very existence of the private upper secondary schools was justified by the state in terms of their status as a form of progressive nodes and experiment schools that could achieve development. The significance of these schools as a kind of local laboratories for new pedagogy was seen in several ways. In concrete terms, it was a question of their pedagogy. Looking at our two examples, it is obvious that they espoused a clearly progressive pedagogy with characteristic traits such as visionary pedagogy and a student-driven approach. We can see that several teachers who worked at Göteborgs högre samskola, in particular, later contributed to the work involved in school reform. John Almgren, Arthur Attman, Ingemar Düring, and Ester Hermansson are examples of teachers associated with the school who also later participated in the 1946 school commission. 96 Göteborgs högre samskola was also appointed by the school commission to carry out a small experimental project to find out how progressive teaching might be implemented at higher levels of education. The school commission was later responsible for the direction towards a more democratic and cohesive school system after the second world war, and constituted a major influence on the substantial reform package implemented in Sweden, especially during the 1960s.

Bildung capital and merchant capital
When we look at what we have called the foundational years, a common feature was the combination of educational capital and economic capital. In Uppsala, there were on the board and among the owners a significant share of well-established academics. Among the shareholders, six out of twenty were professors or associate professors. In Gothenburg, the academics were fewer, three out of twenty-six. In Gothenburg especially, the initiators and the first shareholders were strongly associated with the culture of philanthropy in the city, and this culture featured a long-standing interest in making contributions to education. 97 In Gothenburg, we have identified 95 Diagram 1 in Westberg (2008), 58. 96 We use information from Göteborgs högre samskola 75 år (1976) and SOU 1948:27. 97 Cf. Christensen (2020 persons with connections mainly to business and trade. They were generally liberal in their values. However, Göteborgs högre samskola also had several prominent academics and professors involved in the operations.
Those who involved themselves in the schools typically had an obvious local connection to their city. Running a private school and investing in a school company did not generally seem to attract people living outside the city where the school in question was located. It is also notable that, in Sweden around the turn of the 2oth century, there was not a very strong interest in funding schools that did not also receive public funds. Local elites obviously did invest in the schools, both capital and their own commitment, but at the same time their contributions are relatively small.

Progressivism and marketing
The schools in our study were part of a local context where there was an urgent need for new secondary schools. In both cities, there was a tradition of running more or less progressive girls' schools, in particular. When the two schools published advertisements and calls in the local papers, it is therefore not surprising that the progressive elements of the planned secondary schools were emphasised.
Again, it is important to note that around the turn of the 20th century, it was usually the private schools that offered alternative and progressive teaching. 98 The schools in our study were therefore not an atypical phenomenon internationally. We can also see that the schools had to adopt a progressive profile in order to receive public funding, even though the public inquiry that heralded that decision was performed after the founding of the schools examined in the present study.

The challenges of studying the funding of private upper secondary schools
As has been shown in this article, there are significant challenges involved when studying the financing and operation of private upper secondary schools (and other forms of privately funded education). Part of the reason is that it used to be a relatively unregulated sector in terms of requirements for audits and financial accounting, which was also pointed out in public inquiries at the time. In relation to our case studies, this means that the two upper secondary schools, founded around the same time and run as limited companies, have almost diametrically opposed types of source material. In Uppsala, getting access to administrative material is relatively easy, while this type of material is lacking in Gothenburg. On the other hand, getting access to directors' reports and accounts clearly indicating operational costs after 1926 has been easy in Gothenburg, but no material of this kind has been available in Uppsala.
What the two case studies clearly show, and perhaps especially the Gothenburg case, is the significance of informal social networks for the establishment, operation, and development of the schools. Gifts, services carried out by a company belonging to one of the owners, and access to political networks were apparent resources, but these are difficult to assess simply in terms of value.
In order to create more comprehensive knowledge about the foundational years in particular, more material, especially about operational issues, would probably have been required to form a clearer picture of the period before the 1920s. There are some 98 Yamasaki and Kuno (2018); Lamberti (2002). possible strategies for getting a better grasp on the pioneering period. One alternative would be to study other private upper secondary schools such as for instance Whitlockska samskolan or Sofie Almquist samskola for other examples of the ways in which private upper secondary schools were funded. Another relevant approach would be to investigate the value and significance of obtaining the right to award degrees. It seems fair to assume that this made the owners more interested in getting involved in the operations of the school, and it is also likely that degree-awarding powers constituted a competitive advantage.