Freedom is a word loaded with a wide range of values and connotations. What freedom means cannot be understood as some kind of natural given freedom. It is constructed in accordance to discursive needs and problems that regulate produce and organize different set of freedom (Foucault, M 2006; Rose, N 2003). The purpose in this article is an attempt to create an alternative narrative regarding the concept of freedom in the light of dependence to belong to a European evaluative community. Government bills often use freedom as a form of a promise connected to education and future needs. Education and particular higher education are often pointed out “as the way” to emancipate the individual and make her free and independent in order to contribute to the nation´s development and prosperity. It is stories about a desire to utilize the individual and society’s use of resources in the most effective way for the individual and the nation. The Swedish government bill 2009/10:149 “Academia for this day and age – greater freedom for universities and other higher education institutions” declares that national universities and other higher education institutions need to have an increased freedom to be able to obtain its basic task – to be an independent, critical scrutinizing force that are able to manage to conduct education and research of internationally high quality. The bill underlines that there is a need for increased quality, and that freedom is a prerequisite for high quality. At the same time the government submits the bill 2009/10: 139 “Focus on knowledge – quality in higher education” to the parliament. That bill contains argument to control and monitor universities results and the need for quality assurance as a result of increased freedom for universities and an increased internationalization. The narratives of freedom are interconnected whit ideas about the necessity to compeer and compete, to control quality and efficiency, in order to assert and compete in an era of globalization and greater demands of quality insurance. In this interconnected discourses some steps are made, and some discussions are evident, about what might be the best way to control, monitor and measure quality of higher education (Amaral, A & Joao Rosa, M 2010). In this a struggle between different “acronym” (for example ESU, EUA, EURASHE) can be seen (Neave, G 1998; Ala Vähäle, T & Saarinen, T 2009). One of these is the collaboration within ENQA, with a specific way to measure and define quality. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (HSV) was between 2011 – 2012 “full member under review” as a result of an evaluation were the agency were questioned in several point. The explanation for this, according to HSV was that the Swedish government’s guidelines were not consistent with ENQA: s guidelines. The agency was accepted from 2013 but only for a period on two years.[1]

[1] From 1 January 2013, the HSV has been transferred to two new public authorities: the Swedish Higher Education Authority (Universitetskanslersämbetet) and the Swedish Council for Higher Education (Universitets- och högskolerådet)

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