New business-oriented Master's programmes are on the drawing board. They involve a minimum of 25 hours of company work per week, a minimum of 25 hours weekly hours of study, limited flexibility, and the risk of long travel time between work and study. This is according to a recently published interim report from the Master's Committee.
But according to DTU President Anders Bjarklev, this is an unattractive solution for both students and businesses.
"We have been tasked with creating a business-oriented engineering programme that equips the students in the best possible way to go out into the business world and solve society's biggest challenges. We don't do that by creating an education full of obstacles," he says.
DTU's president has been on a committee that has discussed the possible design of the new business-oriented Master's programme. This has been done as part of a larger university reform, where the political vision has been for fewer students to opt for a classic Master's programme and instead choose a business-oriented Master's degree programme of up to 4 years or a new 1-year Master's programme.
The universities have made a number of proposals for the design of the new business-oriented Master's degree programmes, but they have all been rejected. According to Universities Denmark, 'unreasonable demands and strict preconditions' have prevented a viable solution, and in an article brought by the Danish news site Altinget on Wednesday, they believe it will be impossible to convert 20 per cent of the current Master's programmes to new business-oriented Master's degree places—even though this was the political intention.
Instead, the university sector as a whole estimates that they will have to convert up to one in four Master's degree programmes to the 1-year Master's programme, which has been heavily criticized. Originally, the political agreement was that only one in ten Master's programmes should be 1-year.
In the agreement, there was no desire to establish 1-year Master's programmes in engineering, because there is already a corresponding BEng programme. So DTU's president sees only one outcome.
"If we don't get a sensible framework for the new business-oriented Master's programmes, we cannot make them attractive to the students. Instead, we risk educating fewer engineers. This is paradoxical, because the business sector is asking for more," says Anders Bjarklev.
Society pays the price
According to a recent analysis from Iris Group, Zealand-based companies in engineering-heavy industries such as life science and energy alone will have a shortage of between 17,000-21,000 employees with Master's degrees in science, including engineers.
DTU's president is therefore annoyed that the political visions are not accompanied by realistic preconditions.
"No matter what we do in this situation, society will pay the price. We will have fewer hands to solve the climate crisis, facilitate the green transition, and drive life science developments. Everything that affects us all," says Anders Bjarklev.
Polyteknisk Forening (PF student association) agrees that a business-oriented Master's degree programme with a working week of up to 60 hours is unattractive and they point out that the logistics have not been thought through.
"Our experience shows us that it puts pressure on the students when they have to be in one place in the morning and another in the afternoon. If the schedule is too tight, they have to skip lunch and the socializing taking place on campus after study time. And with a working week of 60 hours on top of that, it cannot help but affect the general well-being," says Mikkel Berrig Rasmussen, President of PF.
DTU already has a industry Master's programme in Kalundborg which is affiliated with Novo Nordisk. Here, the students study and work in the same city, which makes the set-up more flexible. But with the Danish master's degrees reform, DTU is expected to create approximately 450 similar study places.
"It's far from realistic. We cannot offer a satisfactory set-up—neither for the students nor for the business community—even though we want to. We therefore propose to adjust the reform requirements that currently render a viable solution impossible," says Anders Bjarklev.
The final implementation of the Master's degrees reform is expected to be ready in October 2024.
