Tilstandsrapport for høgare yrkesfagleg utdanning 2024

The annual status report for higher vocational education and training (HVET) is written by the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir) on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Research. The report is used as a basis for management and administration of HVET, and by the sector itself.

The database for statistics on higher education (DBH-F) is the primary data source for this report.

The status report for higher vocational education discusses the sector in figures and analyses about students, higher vocational colleges, educational offers, and finances for 2023.

The students

In 2023, we count around 31,400 students in higher vocational education. There are 3,400 more students than the previous year. Growth has picked up again since the levelling off in 2022, and overall the number of students has doubled since 2017. There is also a steady increase in credit production, but each student completes a few fewer credits than the previous year. This is linked to a 60 per cent increase from 2022 to 2023 in the number of students taking shorter study programs under 30 credits.

The three largest subject areas are technical subjects, health and welfare subjects, and economics and administration subjects. The students in these subject areas make up an increasingly large part of the students. In this way, the higher vocational colleges contribute to meeting future competence needs in these subject areas.

Flexible courses

The students are on average 33 years old and to a large extent established employees with long work experience who study alongside work. Most students make use of flexible education options. Part-time students account for 90 per cent of the increase in student numbers. With this increase, over 70 per cent of all students are part-time students, but there are large differences between the various subject areas. Two out of three students follow online offers with or without any physical assembly.

Admission basis

Vocational competence is the most common basis for admission to higher vocational education, but the use of real competence assessment is increasing, particularly in technical subjects and economics and administration subjects. Every third student in each of these subject areas is admitted on the basis of an assessment of real competence. This is in line with the objective of helping to get more people into work.

Graduation, credits, and degree of completion

There has been a marked increase in the number of candidates graduating in 2023, mainly in technical education, and primarily on shorter study programmes. While the number of students graduating in health and welfare and creative subjects remains more or less stable, we see a decrease in graduates in both economics and administration and transport.

The completion rate drops somewhat in 2023. In the last seven years, we see that over 80 percent of all expected credits are completed each year, with the exception of 2020 and 2021. It is these students from 2020 and 2021 who contribute to lower completion in 2023, because they have not reached the goal of their education. This is an effect that can largely be attributed to the pandemic.

The institutional landscape

In the autumn of 2023, there were 60 higher vocational colleges, 16 public and 44 private ones, which reported activity at 175 study locations. There has been a development towards more large higher vocational colleges and fewer small ones. Since 2017, the number of higher vocational colleges with 100 students or fewer has decreased from 48 to 27, while higher vocational colleges with over 1,000 students have increased from four to twelve. The counties Innlandet, Oslo, Rogaland, Troms and Finnmark, Trøndelag, and Viken, have gained more study locations in autumn 2023.

Subject area accreditation

In 2023, there were 12 higher vocational colleges that had subject area accreditation in one or more subject areas. A total of 21 subject area accreditations have been granted, distributed among these 12 higher vocational colleges. There is an increase of four from last year, and three of these are in the field of health.

Educational offers

In the autumn of 2023, there were a total of 389 different educational offers. If one considers variations in the offers in terms of funding (public or school fees), organization (full-time and part-time), form of education (location-based, online, and group-based), 1,866 educational offers within higher vocational education are registered. This shows a wide range of educational offers that make the educations more accessible. In general, the trend is towards more online and hybrid-based offers (mainly online with usually a few physical assemblies), at the expense of the location-based offers in education.

Economics and management

In 2023, approximately NOK 2.5 billion was spent on higher vocational education. About NOK 1.23 billion of the funding was in the form of grants from the Ministry of Education and Research, while NOK 834 million was in the form of school fees. The rest was funds from the county councils, from public grant schemes, and direct allocations from the state budget to some state higher vocational colleges.

We see that the public funds that are being phased in as new studentships largely follow the expected development in credit production.

Digital attachment

The attachments are digital and can be downloaded from https://velegg.hkdir.no/TRHYUvedlegg/2024. There you will find a numerical basis for all the figures and tables in the report, as well as time series not shown in the report itself.