Downsizing Knowledge: The Danish government's plan to shorten humanities education

After the American Century

The OECD statistics on spending for higher education reveal considerable differences between the Scandinavian countries. Norway spends more than $22,000 per student each year; Sweden about $25,000; and Denmark, about $19,000. Some fields cost a lot more than others, notably medicine and science need expensive equipment and laboratories, whose price presumably is much the same regardless of country. The least funding goes to the humanities, which usually have larger classes and need little equipment and no laboratories. Bluntly, Denmark spends less per student for university education than Sweden and Norway, and the Danish students in humanities receive the least support of any students in Scandinavia.  It is also worth noting that the annual expenditure per university student in the US is about $32,000 and in the UK about $28,000. Denmark has fallen behind, and things are about to get worse.

The number of university students in all fields has been falling in Denmark since 2014, with about 13,500 fewer in 2021. The Danish government has saved quite a lot of money by educating fewer people, perhaps as much as $250 million each year. Being behind Sweden and Norway and having fewer students as well, one might think that it was time for Denmark to invest more in education. 

  

But the new Danish government does not see it that way. They have been aggressively cutting the size of the student body. In 2021, the socialist government told the universities to cut enrolments. Copenhagen University announced it would downsize by 1,590 student places by 2030, and 40% of these would be in the humanities. The next three largest universities made similar announcements. The government was downsizing on higher education, and they were just getting started.

During the run-up to the election in November, 2022, the Socialists announced that they would like to remodel university education, especially for the humanities, by eliminating an entire year. At present, students who want a BA and an MA follow a five year curriculum, with the first three years for the BA and the MA as a two-year degree.  The proposal was not laid out in detail, but it appears that this cutback would primarily affect the MA. In other words, there will be less specialization, with an entire year removed from MA studies.  Few have ever been given the opportunity to do a Ph.D. in Denmark, and for those who do get the chance, there are no regular classes or seminars at that level. 

Note that this "reform" was proposed for all of the humanities, perhaps for some of the social sciences, but not for science, medicine, and engineering, which would still have a longer curriculum. If carried through, the inequality between humanities and rest of the university would make Denmark unusual internationally. Norway, Sweden, the US and Britain do not offer a cut-rate degree in foreign languages, history, art. theology, and other humanistic subjects. 

   

If carried through, this will be the second time university education has been shortened. Until 1993, universities offered a six-year education, which combined 4 years of specialization in one subject and 2 years in a second field. The graduates were then qualified to teach two subjects in the gymnasium. If someone was not interested in becoming a teacher, they could stop after four years in one field and receive a degree called a cand. phil. 

The Coming Danish Brain Drain

It seems obvious that when cutting an education from five to four years it is impossible maintain the same level of expertise, nor will Danish universities be as attractive to students. Furthermore, if there are 20% fewer hours in the classroom for students, then about one in five teachers will not be needed. An entire generation either will not be trained at all or will get an advanced degree and find that there are no jobs. Looking ten years ahead, faculties will consist of people between 40 and 65, with almost no young scholars and no Ph.D. students.  Some of the most promising people will go abroad, perhaps to Sweden, Norway, the US, or Britain. They will not return because there will only an impoverished second-rate university sector to come back to. If the government carries through its plan, then a Danish brain drain seems inevitable. Moreover, the government has forced universities to eliminate several thousand places for international students.

The combined effect of the various cutbacks have devastated some departments. At the University of Copenhagen alone, 344 teaching positions disappeared between 2015 and 2017, or about 6.5% of the faculty. More positions have since disappeared at all the universities. The University of Southern Denmark used to offer degrees in Spanish, French, Russian, and Chinese, but all of these have gradually disappeared. Many faculty are deeply distressed, not least because it seems there is no Danish political party that thinks they are worth defending in an election campaign. And when students ask about doing a PhD, the only honest answer one can give them is that he or she should go abroad or forget about it.

Final note on expenditures per student. Harvard University has an endowment of more than $40 billion, and it supplements what students pay in tuition. The total cost to educate one Harvard undergraduate per year is more than $200 thousand per year, more than Denmark spends to educate ten students.  

The big picture on Energy in 2023

After the American Century

Newspaper stories about energy tend to focus on particular countries, new technologies, or one energy sector at a time.  But what is the big picture?  Here are a few facts of the matter.

Is coal being phased out, since it is the very polluting compared to most other energy sources? In the world as a whole, coal consumption continued to rise until c. 2010. Since then it has been leveling off, but it has begun to rise again after the worst of the pandemic was over. Some countries are moving away from coal, notably the United States, but others are increasing their reliance on it, notably China. A bit more than half of all coal consumption takes place in China. For another generation, coal will still be a dominant fuel.

Is world energy use rising along with the increase in population?

These changes in coal use are not related to population growth in any simple way. US population is growing, but coal use there is not. In China, the population is not growing, due to the long enforced "one child per family" policy. But coal use is rising in China, at least in the short term. In other words, every country has a somewhat different resource base and situation. In general, as the standard of living increases, so does energy consumption. However, the most advanced forms of housing and transport break that rising curve. Well insulated buildings with solar panels make many new buildings self-sufficient.

Is the problem of energy one of supply? or perhaps the technologies we need are not yet commercially developed?

The biggest problem used to be that the technologies of extremely efficient energy production and use were too expensive. But in the last decade that has changed, and the biggest problem is the failure of politicians (and therefore of voters) to adopt the changes that are now possible. More than half of all the new cars sold in Norway are now electric vehicles. In contrast, equally rich and more densely populated Denmark is far behind Norway. If Denmark were an automobile producing nation, this might possibly make some sense, but it has no automobile factories at all. Unhappily, it is ill-informed and second-rate politicians who are holding Denmark back on this matter. One can see the same thing in the United States. where some states, notably California and Massachusetts, have energy policies that are excellent, while other states, notably those in the Old South, have terrible records on making the energy transition. I cannot say this strongly enough: today the problem is more social and political than it is technological. Don't believe it? Then consider that Costa Rica gets more than 95% of its electricity from solar, wind, hydo, and geothermal, while few of the other small central American countries come close to that statistic. 

How much energy is generated by wind power?

In 2021, for the first time solar and wind power supplied more than 10% of the world's power. But this general figure hides large disparities. The 10% figure is accurate for Japan or Argentina, but a few countries are far ahead of that level. Scotland generates more than 90% of its electricity from wind. Denmark also is a leader in windmill technologies, and it routinely supplies more than half its electrical needs using wind. On some windy days, windmills supply all of its electricity. Other emerging leaders in wind power include Portugal and Chile. China, the US, and Germany are investing heavily in this area, and they are the three nations with the biggest production, although these nations are still working to free themselves from fossil fuels.

Where is solar power being used the most?

The largest capacity in solar power can be found in China, whose capacity in 2019 was roughly that of the US, Germany, and Japan, combined.   The cost of solar has now fallen below the cost of burning coal, so it is only a failure of leadership and investment that keeps desert nations from cashing in on this opportunity. But consider that Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries subsidize gasoline prices, making it cheaper to burn petroleum than to invest in solar power. Again, this is, at root, a political problem, not a technological one.

And what about oil?

In 2021 the US consumed more oil than any other country, about 20% of world demand. China was next with roughy 16%, India about 5%. Since the combined population of China and India is well over 2 billion, or roughly six times the population of the US, two things are obvious. One, the US must radically reduce its oil consumption if it is going to help stave off more global warming. Two, even assuming it does this, the enormous populations of China, India, and other Asian nations are going to keep demanding oil. It seems unlikely that the global consumption will fall very much, if at all, in the next ten years. Therefore, improvements in all the other energy sectors are going to be crucial to reducing pollution and cutting back on CO2 from other sources. 

Conclusion

The outlook is rather grim. Oil and coal are almost certain to remain the dominant sources of energy for the next decade. We have the technologies and the knowledge to replace them, but we have not yet shown enough political will to make the change.