Investigations begin into how to retain foreign students

The Higher Education and Science Ministry is funding five investigations at Danish higher education institutions to ‘develop, test and evaluate measures that help to retain international students in the Danish labour market’ after graduation, starting this month.

The projects will run for two to three years, at a cost of DKK500,000 (US$74,000) to DKK1 million (US$149,000) each, and the selected institutions will have to share their experiences with the other Danish higher education institutions.

Jesper Langergaard, director of Universities Denmark, the Danish rectors’ conference, told University World News: “It is important to help and inspire international students to consider a career in Danish companies and organisations and we are now strengthening that effort with these projects.”

The five projects selected are:

• • The VIA University College in Aarhus – offering programmes within health, education, social studies, technology, design, business and animation – for the project ‘Communication, student life and internationalisation: The road towards employment through early career encouragement of international students’.
  
  
• • Copenhagen University, KU Science: ‘Career management course for international full degree students at UCPH Science’.
  
  
• • University College Absalon, which is covering the region of Zealand and offers 12 professional bachelor degree programmes – two of which are taught in English. Its Centre for Engineering and Science is testing a ‘Biotech work preparation’ programme.
  
  
• • The Technical University of Denmark or DTU: The project focuses on ‘From international students to value generation in Danish businesses’.
  
  
• • The University of Southern Denmark, TEK Innovation: ‘Career management skills for international students’.

The five selected projects will also include instruction of the Danish language, use of mentor models, focusing on the relationship to the workforce and on practice while studying and in jobs alongside studies.

The projects were selected from 16 applications from universities, professional colleges, business academies and academies of arts.

Langergaard said the initiative “shows that the government has a focus on retaining talented international students in Denmark when they graduate from a Danish university”.

One of the criteria for being selected was that the applicants should demonstrate a collaboration with a “relevant and engaged external partner taking into consideration that international students not only will benefit higher education institutions but also become an important resource for the Danish workforce by being retained after completing their studies”.

“Overall, the international graduates from higher education in Denmark are estimated to contribute positively to public finances over a lifetime, and there is significant potential to improve the overall maths if a larger proportion of international students reach the Danish labour market after graduation,” the ministry said in a statement outlining the call for project proposals.

External partners could include regional or municipal bodies, businesses and other education institutions, as long as they do not receive support from the ministry already.

Students positive

Johan Hedegaard Jørgensen, president of the National Union of Students in Denmark or DSF, agrees that it has to be made easier for international students to learn the Danish language, to reverse the trend of falling interest in learning Danish since a fee had been introduced for international students to learn the language.

But he has argued for a greater focus on international students from outside the European Union and legislative measures to give international students a “real opportunity to study and work in Denmark, notably by lowering the threshold of the requested salary level a graduated international student has to document to get a residence visa”.

Writing in the portal Altinget: Forskning in October, he said international students should be allowed a longer period of grace to seek employment than the six months currently permitted.

He added that the public discourse needs to be turned around to focus on the benefits of attracting international students, rather than seeing them as a problem, as their presence is a great opportunity for Denmark.

“We have to be better at telling each other that students from all over the world have come to Denmark to educate themselves and that we have to build up structures so that international students can actively participate in our local communities,” he said.