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Arts plans to close six small language and area studies programmes and several Master’s degree programmes

To fulfil its sector resizing obligations, Arts has proposed closing six language and area studies degree programmes and combining them into a new Global Studies programme without language requirements. English is also set to lose many student places, but virtually all programmes at the faculty will play their part in reducing admission figures. Several Master’s programmes may also be discontinued.

Photo: Lars Kruse/AU Foto

The management team at Arts has recently published its proposal for a holistic plan that outlines the degree programme portfolio for the faculty going forward. The plan comes in response to enrolment cap requirements set out in the government's Master’s degree reform, which affects universities across the country.

From next year, Arts must admit 174 fewer students than in 2023, and the new plan – which is the faculty management’s proposal and is therefore subject to change – suggests closing several Bachelor’s degree programmes. The faculty plans to close Japan studies, China studies, Arab and Islamic Studies, Russian Studies, Brazilian Studies, and India and South Asian Studies. This amounts to all language and area studies programmes at the School of Culture and Society with the exception of Classical Philology – though the faculty management team plans to close the classical philology Master’s programme and give all students on the Bachelor’s programme a legal right of admission to the Master’s degree in history.

To replace these six programmes, which all have relatively low admission figures, the faculty will create a new programme called Global Studies, which won’t have any language requirements. It will also combine Archaeology and Classical Archaeology into one Bachelor’s degree programme.

If the plan becomes a reality, there will also be major changes at the School of Communication and Culture, where students currently have two entry points for Spanish, German, French and English: language, literature and culture, and international business communication. Spanish, German and French will now have only one entry point, so new Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes will need to be developed for these three language subjects. English will continue to have two entry points, but it will have to reduce its intake by a third and undergo a syllabus development.

The Danish School of Education only offers one Bachelor’s degree programme, Education Studies, which will be reduced by 15 student places. At this school, it is primarily the Master’s degree programmes that are being reviewed.

Proposal to close small language and area studies programmes

Dean of Arts Maja Horst explains that the plan’s main objective is to preserve all the faculty’s subject areas. According to the faculty management team, this is best achieved by merging and redesigning several programmes. And this means that the six programmes within language and area studies will no longer exist as independent degrees. Maja Horst explains that the faculty has had to address the fact that fewer and fewer people are applying for language programmes:

“The price of what we’re proposing is that we no longer have dedicated language programmes in some subject areas.”

“The price of what we’re proposing is that we no longer have dedicated language programmes in some subject areas. But, on the positive side, we believe we can design an attractive degree programme that gives students the opportunity to study different parts of the world. Students would of course be able to specialise in specific areas, but they wouldn’t necessarily get separate teaching in these areas,” says Maja Horst.

“It’s not stated in the holistic plan, but we have appointed a committee to explore the future of language programmes. We really want students to be able to learn languages as part of their university education. And we don’t necessarily think that language learning should be reserved for the relatively few students who take a language degree. We’d like to develop a system in which more students could learn languages,” she says.

You are choosing to redesign the degree programmes that are set to close. But, all things considered, closing and restructuring these programmes will surely affect the supply chain to certain knowledge and research fields, which will in turn have implications for Denmark’s future knowledge preparedness. Have you reflected on this as a management team?

“When we say that we want to preserve all subject areas, we mean that we have put together a proposal for a new degree programme portfolio in which these subject areas are represented as sub-elements. We can no longer have a degree programme for each subject area, but the idea is that individual researchers can all contribute to a broader degree programme. This also means that we’ll continue to have researchers in these areas. When it comes to PhD programmes, it’s not uncommon to write a PhD thesis on a topic that’s a sub-field of or a related field to the one you studied at Master’s level. Many PhD students are already writing on subjects that are much more specialised than their Master’s programme. So, in the future, students will also be able to write a PhD on Russia or classical philology,” says Maja Horst. 

Find the holistic plan under the ‘Phase 1’ heading using this link.

Proposed enrolment caps on Bachelor’s programmes at Arts

Danish School of Education: 15 student places (from 159 to 144)

School of Culture and Society: 54 student places (from 519 to 465)

School of Communication and Culture: 105 student places (from 934 to 829)

Proposed enrolment caps according to subject area:

Pedagogy and didactics: -15

History and philosophy: -27

Social studies: -7

Theology and religion: -9

IT, design and media: -12

Art and culture: -19

Language and area studies: -85

Source: Appendix 1 - Sector dimensioning 2025

Master’s degree programmes may also be closed 

The faculty’s holistic plan addresses both Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes, since it “does not make sense to look at them separately.” This is because many of the Master’s programmes at Arts will have to change as a result of the Master’s degree reform – something that the faculty is aiming to address at this stage. However, as the plan acknowledges, the final terms for graduate reforms are not yet in place “because we are awaiting the report from the Committee for Master’s Degree Programmes.” While plans for enrolment caps need to be finalised by 1 November, there is slightly more time available to explore options for converting Master’s degree programmes. But the final master plan – including the conversion of Master’s programmes – will need to be published in February 2025 so that students applying for university in March 2025 know what the degree programme landscape will look like.

One of the Master’s degree programmes that the faculty management team plans to close is Classical Philology. At present, AU is the only place in the country where it is possible to study classical philology at Master’s level. Other Master’s programmes that are set to close are International Studies, European Studies, Human Security, Global Studies, and Arab and Islamic Studies. These programmes will be replaced by two or three new Master’s degree programmes within the field of international and global studies. The plan also states that the Master’s programme in sustainable heritage management should be discontinued by 2030 and that the subject content of this programme should be incorporated into the Master’s programme in archaeology.

It’s also worth highlighting that the faculty is considering shortening those Master’s degree programmes “whose graduates face the fewest challenges in entering the labour market.” The faculty management team intends to investigate whether the Master's programmes in Information Studies, Digital Design and Cognitive Science could be converted to shorter programmes worth 75 ECTS. This option will also be explored for the media studies and journalism subject areas at Arts. 

Dean: “I can’t promise that all our current functions will be required”

Maja Horst does not expect the holistic plan to lead to a major round of redundancies.

“My plan is that the members of staff at the faculty help to develop our new degree programme portfolio. I obviously want to avoid having to make people redundant. But I can’t promise that all our current functions will be required, and neither can I promise that we won’t have a round of dismissals at a later point. But I certainly don’t think it will be necessary at this stage.”

But what about the language programmes that are closing? Surely there will be employees you won’t need any more?

“These members of staff will be involved in creating the new degree programmes, but yes, there may well be areas in which we no longer require a certain function, and this is of course terrible for the people affected. In these cases, we will do everything we can to help the individual members of staff concerned,” she says.

Members of staff can comment on the plan until 23 October

Members of staff at Arts have the opportunity to comment on the distribution of enrolment caps until 23 October. They can do so by completing an online form. On 1 November, the faculty management team will make a final decision about which degree programmes to close or resize, and this decision will come into effect when prospective students apply next year.

“We in the faculty management team acknowledge that this is a complicated decision-
making process with a number of unknowns. However, due to the pressing issues mentioned above, we cannot wait,” the holistic plan states.

Maja Horst is looking forward to getting input from different subject areas, she explains.

“I don’t think you’ll sway the faculty management team if you simply argue that other programmes should take more of the burden.”

“We have put a lot of proposals out there, but we’ve also made it clear that these are considerations. Because we haven’t made any final decisions yet. But it’s clear that if everyone says that they shouldn’t bear the brunt of enrolment caps or conversions then we can’t really use this input, because we have to solve this problem somehow. What we really need are good academic arguments that make it easier to figure out how to do so. I don’t think you’ll sway the faculty management team if you simply argue that other programmes should take more of the burden. I believe that all programmes at Arts are equally important and deserve the same consideration. So we don’t want to get into a discussion that degenerates into taking shots at each other,” says the dean.

Aarhus BSS also needs to reduce its intake significantly, but it has put its plan on hold and therefore has no overview at this stage. Natural Sciences is also working on a plan. Health has already announced that it has no other option than to cap enrolments on its public health and sports science programmes. Technical Sciences expects to keep its current degree programme portfolio and maintain its intake level for the coming years.