In Sweden, the need to train teachers has been extensive during a period of years. We also face a period when a large group of people born in the 1940s gradually leave the working-life. This will still more stress the need to recruit new teachers. In general, there seems exist an interest to reach individuals with working-life experiences to the teacher occupation. The basic skills teacher ought to develop are, as the Swedish government expresses it, cognitive, cultural, communicative, social and didactic competencies. These skills are described as much personal as role dependent. It, accordingly, seems to be an utmost complex task to train teachers.
At the same time, the Swedish university system has gone through an extensive expansion, combined with a thought to transform the higher education from an “elite university” to a “mass university”. The government has the ambition is to reach new groups, that of different reasons, have been under-represented at the universities. The Dalarna university collage has from this point of view carry out a distant teacher education. The activities are conducted in close co-operation with so-called local “Learning centres”. The distant learning education is now running. It seems interesting to describe how students perceive this study form. We raise the following question:
We also discuss possible consequences for the universities to carry out a successful distance teacher education.