This list of universities in Sweden is based on the Higher Education Ordinance of 1993 (as amended until January 2006). With few exceptions, all higher education in Sweden is publicly funded.
The Swedish higher education system differentiates between universitet and högskola (university and university college respectively). The universities are research-oriented and may award bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees in all academic fields, whereas the högskolor usually are more focused on applied sciences, and only have limited rights granting doctor's degrees. Note, however, that some universities still call themselves högskola in Swedish, mainly older specialised institutions in engineering and medicine (for instance Royal Institute of Technology is called "Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan"). Also, both proper universities and högskolor translate their official names to "university" in English, where in the latter case "university college" would be more correct.
The order of precedence is based on their year of establishment as a university. Only Uppsala University (est. 1477) and Lund University (est. 1666) were actually founded as universities, whereas all the other universities were raised from högskola (university college) status to the higher university status after they had been founded.
Two universities founded under Swedish rule, the University of Tartu from 1632 (now in Estonia) and the Royal Academy of Turku from 1640 (later established as University of Helsinki, now in Finland), as well as the University of Greifswald from 1456 (now in Germany but a fief held by Sweden 1631–1806, Swedish 1806-1815), are excluded from the list.