A study of the evolution of the reform of Swedish higher education is summarized. The study focuses on the goals, dimensions, and organization of the change, discussed in the context of state intervention, public policy, planning, and authority in European higher education. Three theories of the development of higher education (interventionist, technocratic, and politicization) are provided. Various stages and elements in the evolution of the reform are chronicled: 1960s expansion, the 1968 Commission on Higher Education and its inquiry process, discussion of educational goals, enrollment limitations or distribution, reorganization, and the final adoption of reform. The actual reform is analyzed as a political process based on four dominant planning ideologies that have redefined and reinterpreted major goals. These ideologies are bureaucratic-administrative, economic-technocratic, political-corporative, and symbolic. A brief bibliography is included. (SW)