Not long ago – in September, to be precise – the AU board were told at a Sandbjerg seminar that the senior management team were sticking roughly to the agreed plan. The management explained that they expected a deficit of DKK 100 million in 2013 instead of the DKK 81 million that the board had approved. Following this announcement, the board said that they expected the management to stick within the agreed budget for the next three years. 

So the representatives of the academic staff (associate professor Peter Bugge and professor Susanne Bødker) were completely unprepared when they were presented with a point outside the official agenda presenting cuts of DKK 200 million only one and a half months later.

“We were amazed to find out that we had to make such drastic cuts,” says Bødker.

“In September, which isn’t very long ago, the board were presented with a forecast that showed very little deviation in relation to the budget that had already been agreed for the years ahead,” she continues.

The student representatives were also totally unprepared. Master’s student Benjamin Bilde Boelsmand:

“Nobody told us anything before the meeting. We were given a document containing some general figures that we were asked to hand back at the meeting, so I was really surprised when I listened carefully to what the rector had to say.”

Why didn’t you ask for an extraordinary general meeting to discuss this point?

“No comment,” says Boelsmand. 

When asked the same question, Susanne Bødker says:

“The facts were clear enough. And we couldn’t do much without more detailed budgets – which weren’t available because they haven’t been drawn up yet.”

So why don’t you wait until more detailed budgets are available before considering the cuts?

“Let me put it this way: the budget doesn’t have to be approved until 18 December.”

100 plus 100

The planned cuts, which the board were asked to support, were presented by the rector, Brian Bech Nielsen, in the Anatomic Lecture Theatre on Wednesday 27 November:

The senior management team aim to find cuts amounting to DKK 100 million to cover the deficit, enabling the university to balance the books from 2015 onwards. There will also be cuts amounting to a further DKK 100 million, which will be invested in the pools that the management can use for new strategic focus areas.

At the moment Peter Bugge and Susanne Bødker have no wish to comment on whether they think the new strategic investments should be financed by cuts at AU. 

“We’d like to wait until the board meeting in December before answering that,” says Bødker.

Benjamin Bilde Boelsmand has no comment, but he does say:

“We student representatives don’t feel we’ve approved any budgets until 18 December.”

Informed by the rector

Michael Christiansen, the chairman of the board, refuses to answer questions relating to discussions of the cuts at the board meeting.

The chairman wasn’t informed of the financial situation until Brian Bech Nielsen told him some of the details in mid-October. On the same occasion, the rector also told him that the senior management team would be sitting down to find out how to tackle the situation.  

How surprised were you at what Bech Nielsen told you in October?

“I don’t want to try and define the degree of my surprise, but I can say that I was concerned about the size of the figures in question. I knew we had to do something to balance the books after a period in which the university had been running with a deficit that was approved by the board in order to finance the academic development process. But I didn’t know how much we were going have to save.”

When asked whether he informed anyone else on the board of what he learned in October, Christiansen says:

“My lips are sealed. That’s confidential.”

My understanding is that there were no documents available for the discussion of this point (when it was discussed at the board meeting, ed.) – apart from a few general figures on a piece of paper. How can the board make a decision on that kind of basis?

“No comment. That’s confidential.”

How did the board members react when you were informed by the rector at the board meeting?

“I don’t wish to comment on who said what and who did what. That’s confidential.”

Did the board agree unanimously to support the cuts proposed by the management at the board meeting?

“I think we will have to stop here.”

The board has been asked to approve the budget for 2014 at its final meeting this year on Wednesday 18 December.

The board

The board is the supreme authority at AU. There are eleven members:

Five of the members are elected from within the university, including two members representing the academic staff, one member representing the technical-administrative staff, and two representing the students. The chairman and other five members come from outside the university – from the business community, for instance.

• Read more about the board

Translated by Nicholas Wrigley