The Rectorate’s Column
Have a great summer!
The semester is drawing to an end, including everything that goes with it: Students nervous about their exams, graduation events, bottles of bubbly, proud parents and relatives, more time for research and then the ‘final push’ to get things finished before the offices and laboratories are shut down for a while.
We end meetings by saying to each other ‘Have a great summer!’ But probably, what we really mean is: ‘Thank you – it’s been a great pleasure working with you. I’m looking forward to working with you again after the summer holidays’.
The end of the semester also invites us to look back and take stock of how it all played out. At SDU, we can sum up the past semester with considerable satisfaction. The level of activity has been high across faculties and campuses, and many of the activities have been incredibly successful. On behalf of the Rectorate, I would like to express our sincere thanks for your efforts over the past six months. SDU exists to make a positive difference to the world around us. In the spring of 2024, the University met this goal – and then some. Thank you!
But the end of the semester also invites us to look ahead and make suggestions for the issues that will be important in the coming six months. A look into the Rectorate crystal ball tells us that three things in particular will characterise the autumn semester of 2024.
First: Whether we like it or not, the master’s degree reform is going to be a big issue in the autumn semester. On 19 June, the Master’s Degree Committee published a sub-report with considerations on – among many other things – models for reorganising master’s degree programmes. Adapting our portfolio of education programmes to the new framework will be a large and difficult task. But with the sub-report, we now have a better basis for having an open discussion about how we at SDU can address the demands of the reform. We have been looking forward to this.
Honestly: the task we are facing is not easy. But amidst the concerns about how to reorganise and adapt our own master’s degree landscape, it is worth noting that the reform also offers opportunities. We must seize and exploit these.
Second: We welcome the positive developments in Sønderborg, Esbjerg and Kolding – and we are pleased that with the decommissioning plan for Slagelse, we have resolved a difficult situation for many employees based in West Zealand.
In addition, we have engaged in an extended and constructive dialogue with stakeholders in and around Vejle regarding the establishment of new IT education programmes and a new campus in Vejle. In these discussions, SDU has always emphasised that we will only establish new programmes if there are future prospects of the programmes becoming financially and academically sustainable. As we approach the summer holidays, it is becoming increasingly clear that both of these conditions are in place. We are not there yet, but we are well on our way.
At the same time, it is clear that Christiansborg (the Danish Parliament) is beginning to regard SDU programmes in Vejle as a political reality. In the autumn of 2023 – as part of the ‘relocation agreement’ – we were awarded around DKK 20 million to establish new education programmes in Vejle, and in connection with the sector dimensioning, which is part of the master’s degree reform, just a few months ago, we were ‘granted’ a total of 400 places for new IT bachelor programmes in Vejle.
Setting up a brand new campus and new education programmes is no easy or simple task. But the potential gains are huge. We can contribute with highly sought-after graduates and thereby support positive development throughout the Triangle Region, and a campus in Vejle will consolidate and expand our position as the University of the entire Region of Southern Denmark. Both of these are worth the effort.
Third: We believe that in the autumn semester of 2024, we will see a continued strengthening of what is the crucial starting point for our education programmes and collaborations with the surrounding society: Research. The development over the past semesters reveals that SDU is standing strong – in terms of both quantity and quality. We are publishing more and more, and our research is cited extensively (in fact, of the Danish universities, SDU has the third highest Field Weighted Citation Impact score).
We have to build on this strong foundation and add to the quality of our research in the coming semesters. Not because quality is our end goal – but because high quality is ultimately a prerequisite for us to create value for and with society.
Finally, we would like to express a deep and heartfelt thank you for the past semester. We wish everyone a great summer (but we really mean: ‘Thank you – it’s been a great pleasure working with you. I’m looking forward to working with you again after the summer holidays’).
The Rectorate
