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.
