What happens to an aspiring profession as it is subject to rapid, pervasive academisation? How does it shape the professional group, their education and work tasks, their conditions and position in the labour market? In 1977, the professional formation of Swedish laboratory assistants was transferred to the higher education sector. They were part of a wider set of education programs, including nurses, occupational therapists, teachers, preschool teachers, and leisure time pedagogues – all of which had previously been trained in separate institutions outside of academia. Yet, the laboratory assistants stand out in other respects. First, laboratory assistant had long been a female dominated technical specialty, and it continued to be so. Second, their entrance into academia marked the beginning of a sharper academic turn than in most professions – evident in the surge of the number of biomedical scientists with a doctor’s degree. A very modest trickle of seven PhDs in the 1980s was followed by hundreds in the decades to follow, so that their total number currently equals every fifteenth practitioner. In the same period, the professional group secured an occupational monopoly, first in the guise of a protected title and then as a professional license. In this paper, we draw on survey and interview materials, as wells as historical documents and trade press, to analyze whether and in what respects this has brought changes in terms of work content, work conditions and career trajectories for the group.