[Emore]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "base acceptance rate". But the universities usually accept around 50% based on high school grades, 25% based on the entrance exam and a further 25% on mixed backgrounds (professional experience, prior university credits etc). The numbers themselves differ between universities.

If you meant something else, I'm happy to explain that too :)

[tokenadult]

Does the entire relevant age group in Sweden apply to university, or do only some students who complete secondary schooling apply for further schooling? The base acceptance rate for any one university is the number of students who are admitted divided by the number who applied. (In the United States, that number is just above 7 percent at some of the most highly desired universities, which receive almost 30,000 applications but admit only just more than 2,000 students.) Some universities in the United States have a base acceptance rate above 90 percent, so on that basis I suppose one could claim that university schooling is "universal" (that is, universally available) here too. More than 500 schools of higher education in the United States have explicit policies of open admission, meaning that they will admit ALL applicants without any requirements beforehand (except possibly completion of high school or residence in the state where the college is located).

What exactly does it mean for higher schooling to be both universal and free?

[Emore]

Ah, thank you for the explanation. I digged around a little, and the base acceptance rate of all university applications was 54% för 2008. This is an aggregated number. For Sweden's most prestigeous med school (Karolinska Institutet) the number is 3,6%, so it does vary a lot depending on the education.

There are very few programmes that don't have any requirements. However, if one doesn't have any good high school grade, the "university entrance"-exam is a way in, or else professional experience. Hence, there are (again, depending on the education) a wider range of ages represented. However, 28% of all applicants are 19 years old. No one in my class is older than 25.

About universal and free, I'd say the system here is close to very good. According to me "universal" apply more to the possibility of actually studying, than the numbers of students accepted. And "free" is simply no tuition fees, which Sweden does not have. This is also the main difference, with the US having (large) fees.

[tokenadult]

The submitted article mentioned colleges with large list prices for tuition and other expenses, but didn't mention

a) the majority of United States students attend universities that are much less expensive in their official price,

and

b) a majority of students attending expensive universities get "financial aid" (discounts from the list price).