AU must scale back admissions to English-taught degree programmes

Despite Aarhus University’s ambitions to enhance its international profile, we will have to cut the number of student places on our English-taught Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes over the coming years. This is necessary to ensure we stay below the cap on international student places introduced as part of the sector resizing.

At Bachelor’s level, AU will unfortunately have to reduce the number of places from 436 to 272, effective from the 2027 summer admissions round. With great regret, the senior management team has therefore decided that the Faculty of Arts must convert the Bachelor’s programme in Cognitive Science to Danish, while Aarhus BSS must convert a substantial part of the Aarhus-based English-taught Bachelor’s programme in Economics and Business Administration.

Both programmes are academically strong and successful, but the changes are necessary to comply with political requirements. The decision has been made in an effort to minimise the academic impact of converting programmes, based on the assessment that both degree programmes have a sufficiently large and well-qualified pool of Danish applicants. In addition to the changes at Arts and Aarhus BSS, Natural Sciences must reduce the number of English-taught Bachelor’s places by 20. Technical Sciences and Health Sciences will not be affected, as they do not offer English-language Bachelor’s degree programmes.

At Master’s level, AU must reduce the number of English-language places by 340 for the 2027 summer intake. The faculties will be able to take this year’s application and admission patterns into account before deciding where cuts should be made.

These reductions are being implemented even though Aarhus University is already required to offer significantly fewer English-language student places than several universities in the Copenhagen area because of the above-mentioned cap. This is despite the fact that AU graduates enjoy high employment rates and that international graduates generate substantial economic value for Denmark – even accounting for those who leave the country after they graduate. Moreover, AU supplies highly qualified graduates to employers across Denmark and is the primary provider of graduate talent in Western Denmark. The senior management team is deeply concerned about the framework conditions for internationalisation and will work to improve them so that Aarhus University can continue to educate highly qualified graduates for the benefit of society. 

• Read a recent opinion piece by Berit Eika on Uddannelsesmonitor (in Danish; requires AU network or VPN)