The Sad Result of Swedish Low-Tech Education

Mike Tyndall, an automotive analyst with Nomura Securities in London, predicts the result of a Ford sell-out of Volvo Car to Geely to be: 

• The Chinese company probably wants to move Volvo production to China from Sweden and Belgium in three to four years, when the next generation of Volvo models will be introduced. 
  

Thus the end of Swedish car industry seems to be approaching, a process initiated when Leif

Johansson sold Volvo Car to Ford 10 years ago, because Volvo Car no longer could survive as an independent Swedish high-tech company. The hope now goes to Konsortium Jakob, a small group of Swedish engineers and investors inspired by Volvos first model Jakob leaving the factory on April 14 1927, seeking to match the bid by Geely...as if the clock could be turned back 80 years...

One may ask if this is a result of an old-fashioned low-quality education of engineers in Sweden, described by Leif Johansson as old formulas from the days of Newton. With a modern high-quality education the fate of Volvo Car probably could have been different. But who cares about modern high-quality high-tech education? We have IKEA and H&M...and one astronaut... and hand out the Nobel Prize...

...while China takes over the car industry as expressed by Li Shufu, the owner of Geely: a car for everybody...the slogan of Volvo from 1927...a car is nothing more than a sofa and four wheels.

The focus of Teknikdelegationen chaired by Leif Johansson is to encourage highschool students, with inspiration by astronaut Christer Fuglesang, to go into engineering education preparing for careers in an automotive industry which no longer will exist when students come out from technical university. The Delegation today launches the recruitment campaign The Broad Line  at a press conference, with astronaut Christer Fuglesang. 

The Broad Line campaign does not reveal that Swedish technical education of today rests on a basic education in mathematics and science which is essentially unchanged since 1927...

The Delegation does not seem to understand that the main reason technical eduction is unattractive to many young eager inventive minds, is that it is old-fashioned and thus boring and depressing. Only one person in the Delegation, Peter Larsson of Sveriges Ingenjörer, has shown an understanding of this fact expressed in my letter to the Delegation and in an analysis of its directives. There are 14 people in the Delegation including the President of KTH and one astronaut.