The early 1990s are marked by two types of important events on a global scale. First, these were years of economic recession, accompanied by rising unemployment, the widespread ascendance of new forms and techniques of governance, and politically enforced restrictions on public spending.  Second, the early 1990s made knowledge society a common trope, and the global university enrolment ratio rose steeply. The two changes are interlinked –expansion of higher education bolstered youth unemployment, a knowledge economy was held up as a model for western societies – and both impact the system of professions.

This paper examines how the combination of recession and university expansion was accommodated in one specific locale in the system of professions, the case of Swedish university teachers. The academic profession was subjected to the same changes in the forms and techniques of governance as other Swedish professions. But whereas most professions encountered novel forms of steering under conditions of scarcity, the higher education sector was reformed during a period of abundance. Two resource-shocks hit the system. One derived from an increased flow of research funding, the other from the rapidly increasing number of students. We argue that this mode of introduction (1) postponed the perception of adverse effects on the profession, (2) aligned with, accentuated and altered the structure of an internally differentiated but formally unified university system, (3) created specific groups of beneficiaries at different poles of the system – and that, thereby, (4) an incentive-based institutional framework was worked into the tissue of the professional body.