DENMARK: Tuition fees and private universities loom

Students and a united political opposition are baffled by new proposals from Science Minister Helge Sander to depart from the Danish tradition of free higher education for all. Both groups seemed taken by surprise at parliamentary debates following publication last week of a discussion paper setting out the options for a partial privatisation of higher education.

The discussion paper opens the door for the privatisation of one or more of the current universities, with the IT university in Copenhagen named as an example. The paper also paves the way for new actors in the field, such as big companies.

Quite co-incidentally - or was it? - Danish corporation Lego announced it had advanced plans to establish a private university. Lego admitted to having discussed the idea with the minister on several occasions.

The prospect of user-paid education is not shocking to anyone outside the Nordic countries but a bomb in a turban in Denmark, whose public funding policy is markedly different from that in the US or even the UK.

According to the OECD, the Danish tax burden is now the highest among its member states. In return, a number of key services are free and education, including higher education, has traditionally been one of these.

Students are so furious that, as a commentator at the Copenhagen University Post quipped: "Their thumbs were down to the point of being dislocated."

"Helge Sander has systematically lied to us since 2006," exclaimed National Union of Students Chairman Mikkel Zeuthen when the union got wind of the paper.

"We have long [resisted the introduction of tuition fees], which have become widespread in Europe. But every time we confronted Helge Sander with our concerns, he replied the government did not wish to introduce student payments."

It is true the minister on many occasions has distanced himself from the idea of tuition fees at Danish universities. In a remarkable number of his quotes from recent years on the subject, however, he did add a modifying "ordinary" before "universities".

Universities find it more difficult to find common ground on the issue. The organisation representing the nation's rectors, Universities Denmark, is probably the last with a stake in this to have officially remained silent. But it simultaneously received a jumbo-sized pacifier in the form of a 'freedom package' that finally turned back some of the radical and widely detested changes to higher education introduced with the university law of 2003.

Individual rectors are divided, with Århus University Rector Lauritz B Holm-Nielsen supporting the idea if the prime minister's vision of having a Danish university ranked in a worldwide top 10 by 2010 is to materialise. But then, his university started out as a private university back in 1928.

Rector of the University of South Denmark and chair of Universities Denmark, Jens Odderhede, has privately said he feels the time is not right yet.

While the proposals may not be spectacular for international readers, some of the details are - most notably the fact that the minister explicitly supports the paper's proposal that if tuition fees were introduced at private universities, there should be no publicly-set ceiling to them. In fact, this is so extraordinary by European standards that it will probably be retracted in due course.

The sad thing is that the minister genuinely seems to believe competition in the form of private universities will bring diversity to a sector which in recent years has been increasingly straitjacketed by a mercantile government that has strongly favoured the applied over theoretical, both in spirit and in funding.

In the political news portal altinget.dk, [url=http://www.altinget.dk style=bluelink]Sander commented on concerns that market forces would set back the past decade's great strides in making higher education equally accessible for all, regardless of social and economic background.

"I see opportunities and more freedom, not restrictions," he said, before the notoriously poor listener in him took over: "I will present a legal proposal about this and then [the critics] can express their concerns. Of course I will listen to them but I don't share their concerns quite yet."

ard.jongsma@uw-news.com