Study Programmes at Copenhagen University in Danger of ClosingI treasure my contacts with both the people and the institutions of the University of Copenhagen and its Carsten Niebuhr Institute for Near Eastern Studies. They have done some impressive work in the past and have a tremendous amount of important work in progress. This is not encouraging news.
The Situation
The Minister for Higher Education and Science plans to lower the student intake at the Humanities in order to prevent future over-unemployment of highly qualified young people. This entails a 30% cut of students at the M.A. level. Danish law, however, insists that every B.A. graduate has the right to an M.A. course of study. Logically, then, cutting the M.A. intake will automatically mean a huge cut in the B.A. intake since the M.A, intake is generally (and understandably) only a small portion of the B.A. intake for the subjects below.
For large subjects such a cut is difficult but not life-threatening. For the subjects at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies the plans announced by the Ministry and to be implemented by the Faculty are a disaster.
The following table illustrates what will happen to the subjects at the Department from 2015:
BA intake 2014 BA-intake 2015 Reduction
Arabic/
Middle Eastern Studies 50 10 80%
Japanese Studies 25 5 80%
China Studies 50 10 80%
Russian 25 5 80%
Religion 70 20 70%
SE-Asia/
(Thai and Indonesian) 15 0 100% closure
Korean Studies 15 0 100% closure
Indology 10 0 100% closure
Tibetology 10 0 100% closure
Iranian Studies 15 0 100% closure
Turkish Studies 15 0 100% closure
Hebrew Studies 10 0 100% closure
ANE Studies
(Assyriology, Egyptology,
NE archaeology) 30 10 67%
Greek Studies 10 0 100% closure
Balkan Studies 15 0 100% closure
Polish 10 0 100% closure
Arctic Studies 10 0 100% closure
American Indian Studies 10 0 100% closure
395 60 85%
Saturday, October 25, 2014
The Death of Ancient Studies: Part 1
The following was sent to me this week:
