The Rectorate’s Column
From 2025, SDU’s future BA admissions will be reduced
In the Rectorate, we represent SDU’s interests in the work on the master's degree reform. It is – to put it mildly – a difficult task we have been set.
The master's degree reform is basically a political desire rebalance the Danish education system as a whole, including encouraging more young people to become interested in and to apply for the so-called vocational and profession-orientated educations. One of the political tools used to this end is limiting the number of student places in the universities’ academic bachelor programmes.
Distributing almost 23,500 student places among the universities has been a key track in the master's degree reform, and on 19 April 2024, an agreement was reached among the parties to the agreement. In the distribution between the 8 universities, the most important considerations have been 1) society’s demand for our graduates and 2) that there must be education programmes throughout Denmark. When it comes to society’s demand for graduates, SDU is on a par with the other multi-faculty universities. But SDU has been given extra study places to ensure some of the growth outside Odense planned and already partly implemented by SDU as part of the previous reform – the so-called ‘Relocation Agreement’. For instance, we have designated bachelor student places for IT programmes in Vejle. Overall, from 2025 to 2029, SDU will be permitted to admit 3,656 academic bachelor students each year. From 2030, the figure will be lowered based on developments in the national demographics for 19–23-year-olds.
What does a framework of 3,656 academic bachelor student places mean for SDU?
After the COVID-19 pandemic, we had a record low intake of 3,182 students in 2022 which increased to 3,482 in 2023. This means that in 2025 we may actually have a slightly higher intake than we had in 2023, and considering the declining number of young people, not least in the Region of Southern Denmark, I do not necessarily think that the limit will be felt as a constraint. At the same time, we at SDU have changed the admission requirements and processes in connection with the BA admissions from 2025. In this respect, we have a strategic focus on clear communication as well as smooth admission of talented and well-qualified students to SDU’s bachelor programmes. Due to this, there will be many changes in the lead up to the admissions in 2025. Read more about it here.
SDU’s framework for BA student places in 2025 will also have an impact on the number of students we – three years later, in 2028 – are allowed to admit to the classic 2-year, 120 ECTS master’s degree programmes, as well as on how many will be admitted to new types of shorter master’s degree programmes and master’s degree programmes for working professionals, which will become a reality from 2028 as part of the master’s degree reform’s restructuring of the landscape for master’s degree programmes.
What will be even more important in the future?
We are looking into a future in which we will be even more tightly controlled in terms of the number of student places, and it will require a lot of consideration to design SDU’s overall education portfolio. However, this does not change the fact that SDU will continue to develop new programme offerings in the future to contribute highly specialised labour to the local, regional and national labour markets.
After many years of focus on quality, SDU has a strong portfolio of first-rate degree programmes. In this context, I would like to focus on 1) dropout, 2) the transition between bachelor’s and master’s and 3) employment. These are three parameters that have been decisive for the share of student places allocated to SDU in the years 2025–2029, and they will be at least as crucial in 2029 when places will be allocated again for the next 5-year period, and further, these are parameters in which SDU has the potential to do even better.
I think that we at SDU should play to our strengths. The future university landscape must adapt to the needs of the labour market and of society – this runs like a common thread through the political agreement on the future landscape of master’s degree programmes. But it is actually already clear in SDU’s strategy: ‘Towards 2030, we will develop the content and format of the University’s education portfolio, thereby meeting society’s – and particularly the Region of Southern Denmark’s – need for skills and new knowledge’.
Together and across the board, we at SDU must create attractive degree programmes and learning environments in which we can make the best possible use of the opportunities in the new framework. Over the next six months, we will work on the connection between the portfolio of BA programmes and the outline of the new master’s degree landscape which will be offered from 2028. The discussions will start in the Executive Board and the Council for Education in the autumn, and after this relevant academic environments and other relevant parties will be involved.
