A tiresome election from the viewpoint of a university
The universities as well as the future of higher education was hardly discussed during the election this autumn.
Dear staff
The universities did not get much attention during the recent general election. Thus, this election was also similar to many previous elections. On the other hand, I noticed that there were a number of announcements from the universities in the days after the election, attempting to influencing the politicians during government formation.
Before the election, there were many proposals for changes at the universities. In particular, Denmark can more III was heavily criticised – not only by universities, but also by the corporate world. Everyone sees the proposal to shorten the Master's degree programmes to one year for a large proportion of university students as a worrying deterioration of the programmes. Nor are the STEM programmes exempt in the proposal, which calls for 20 % of our students to take a 1-year Master's degree programme in the future.
Right now there is a standstill regarding the proposals and therefore we do not yet know the final form of either Denmark can more III or the Regionalisation – including relocation of degree programmes from the big cities.
Due to the low enrolment in several of the programmes at our faculty this year and the prospects for smaller youth cohorts, the management group has started to review the budgets of the faculty and departments. The Faculty of Science and SDU make an extra effort to recruit students with, among other things, the new initiative SDU Takeover. We therefore await the intake of students in 2023 and hope that the poor intake in 2022 was an anomaly.
It is my assessment that we have a number of parametres that we can work with if it becomes necessary to adjust the budgets. Within education, we can, for example, work to increase retention. At the same time, there is potential to increase external revenue, especially from private foundations, a strategy that the entire university will focus on in the coming years.
I know that the heads of department are very interested in being in dialogue so that we can find solutions together. I would therefore encourage everyone to come up with proposals for actions now that our politicians are hesitant to support the universities' finances in these years.
Marianne Holmer, dean