Danish higher education: From Bologna to de-internationalisation
CHEF Talk by Hanne Tange, Associate Professor, Department of Culture and Learning, Aalborg University, Denmark.
Oplysninger om arrangementet
Tidspunkt
Sted
CUDiM, Aarhus University, Campus Aarhus, building 1483, room 656. Video-link to Danish School of Education, Campus Emdrup, room D118.
In this presentation Hanne Tange examined the case of international higher education in Denmark, as this has developed between 1999 and 2019. From the start, Danish universities were actively involved in the Europeanisation of higher education, aligning programmes, grading, entrance requirements and teaching language with standards recognised internationally. As a result, Denmark became a popular destination country for international students in the 2000s, which motivated a dramatic expansion in the number of English-medium courses.
By 2017, 49% of all MA programmes were taught in English and 11.3% of students identified as ‘international’. Coexisting with internationalism in HE is a welfare nationalist discourse. At first, this was mainly visible in relation to language, with the Danish People’s Party arguing against the use of English in research and education.
Since 2016, several Danish parties have expressed concerns over rising numbers of European Union citizens claiming free education and student grants, and in 2018, this led to the government demand that the number of international students be cut. As a result, several programmes have closed, while others were ‘de-internationalised’.
This talk had 29 participants from 8 different countries.