This project explores institutional conditions for research and higher education. The focus is on how "graduate education" has been construed and institutionalised. From the perspective of a contextualising history of science the project will examine how different doctoral degrees have been approved by the authorities, whereby the applicant educational institutes have been granted rank and resources. The main theme of the project thus delineated serves as a prism through which more general trends and issues are reflected. The period investigated stretches from 1870, when a PhD degree was introduced into universities, to 1969, when the different doctoral degrees that had been accepted were replaced by the uniform Swedish "doktorsexamen". The processes that during these 100 years led engineers, veterinarians, agronomists, economists, foresters, dentists and pharmacists to be acknowledged as real researchers are analysed. The doctorate as an institution affected activities in the institutes for professional education, a dissemination that eventually had repercussions on the universities. After World War II, when society was perceived to be in need of more research and the notion of "research policy" was established, the education of researchers became a key issue. "Graduate education" evolved into a general notion and an object of uniform political regulation. Throwing historical light on this institution may illuminate some of the problems that attempts to reform it have met.