Ministry shares plan to limit university admissions
As part of the master's reform, the ministry will limit admissions to university programmes.
Dear staff
Now we have the first concrete proposals from the work regarding the master's reform. First via a leaked memo and the next day an official proposal from the Ministry of Higher Education and Science with suggested – but not final – figures for the sector dimensioning.
In total, admissions are suggested to be lowered by 2,600 students at the country's universities. Of this, 370 at SDU or 9.3 %. The baseline is the average admission figures from 2018 to 2022 – and unfortunately admissions at SDU have already fallen by roughly the same number.
This means that we can continue without major changes, but the challenge lies in the desire for growth, e.g. when creating new education programmes. Here it may be necessary to prioritize between new initiatives at SDU.
The next step in the master's degree reform is the institution's plans, where conversion of programmes to shorter programmes or to vocational master's programmes must be reported to ministry.
Here, it is important that there is agreement between the universities. Therefore, the deans have been given the task of finding solutions across the country. A rough outline of the institution's plans is expected to be presented at the end of May.
On Tuesday morning this week, the management group, the education committee, the heads of studies and the chair of the study board met to discuss the next step in the strategic work with the faculty's education programmes.
An important purpose of these meetings is to ensure support for the work with educational development at our faculty, so that heads of department and heads of programme, head of studies and the study board chair share a common vision and work in the same direction.
This time we put the finishing touches on a vision for a new educational framework, which will now be consulted on by the faculty. The purposes of the new framework are many, and key elements will be to learn from each other and have the good examples and successes spread across our education programmes.
There is a shared ambition to increase completion of the studies, especially now that our programmes are being dimensioned. Also, the reorganization of several of our programmes as a result of the master's reform requires new thinking and the desire to train students to become competent employees are important arguments for a new educational framework.
We discussed barriers to success, and here resources are crucial. Making changes takes time, and we have to be creative to find the time for the individual to develop the educations.
It was good to discuss these issues across the board and not least to feel the support for the common vision and direction. Preparatory work will now start over the next year, during which pilot tests will be carried out in teaching and administrative processes will be prepared to handle changes in the programmes.