The Swedish National Union of Students (Sveriges Förenade Studentkårer, SFS), is an umbrella organisation of students' unions at higher education facilities in Sweden. The organisation was founded in 1921. It has around 64 affiliated students' unions, gathering around 270,000 students (2007).
The large number of organised students can in part be explained by the fact that membership in the official local students' union was mandatory for students at universities and university colleges in Sweden until 2010. The requirement has a long history back to the precursor to Swedish students' unions, the students' nations where membership became mandatory in 1667.
The local students' union is, however, free to decide whether to join the National Union of Students or not. Although a majority of the students' unions are members, some have opted to stay out, including several organising business, law and medicine students. Occasionally, affiliated unions choose to leave the organisation, but sometimes rejoin at a later date, a pattern followed by both the Stockholm University Students' Union and the Uppsala Student Union. The latest case of a large local students' union withdrawing from the Swedish National Union of Students is The Stockholm University Students' Union, in 2005.
The organisation works to represent the interest of its members on a national level, towards the Government, the Swedish Parliament, the political parties and the government agencies concerned with higher education. The organisation is also active on the international arena, particularly within the National Unions of Students in Europe, ESIB.
At the annual national conference representatives from the member students' unions meet to decide on the policy framework of the organisation and to elect a national board. The board has 19 members, including the President and two or three Vice Presidents. The President and the Vice Presidents work full-time at the head office in Stockholm during their term.
Several former student politicians in Sweden have moved on to high-level national party politics. One of them was Olof Palme, who served as President of the Swedish National Union of Students in 1953.
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“But the creative person is subject to a different, higher law than mere national law. Whoever has to create a work, whoever has to bring about a discovery or deed which will further the cause of all of humanity, no longer has his home in his native land but rather in his work.”
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