In 2001, a new national policy document was issued by the Swedish government, mainly dealing with questions on how to increase diversity of the student body with regard to social background, ethnicity, gender and disability. To varying degrees, methods such as validation of informally acquired competencies were introduced to boost heterogeneity in higher education (HE), as this would reflect a genuinely democratic society. In the latest policy document (2004/05:162), internationalisation is focused, yet a number of critical questions regarding democracy and diversity in HE remain to be discussed. In this paper we intend to address some of them, such as diversity and accessibility concerning postgraduate studies. Our key question is: How do students perceive their possibility to pursue an academic career by means of applying for entrance to PhD studies? Findings from interviews conducted with one female PhD student and another woman who had applied for entrance to a PhD programme but was not accepted, and students with reading/writing disabilities in undergraduate courses show that these students are highly motivated to study but are uncertain about their possibility to pursue an academic career. However, the picture is far more complicated than that as we would like to illustrate in this paper.