A compromise agreement on reducing the student intake to Danish universities was signed in early November by the Danish Minister of Higher Education and Science Sofie Carsten Nielsen and the organisation Universities Denmark. Under the controversial resizing model announced by the Danish Government at the end of September, 2 400 graduate and 3 500 undergraduate student places from programmes with high graduate unemployment - primarily in the humanities - are expected to be cut over the next four years (see ACA Newsletter ‘Education Europe’, Edition October 2014). 

Minister Nielsen reiterated that, despite the compromise, the number of places cuts has not been reduced with respect to what was foreseen initially and that the basic principle of binding the cuts to statistics on unemployment will be kept. However, under the new deal between universities and the government, the reform will be phased slower and with more involvement of universities, who will be granted more freedom to choose which subjects to downsize. Also, the implementation has been postponed until 2018-2020 and the agreement stipulates that this model will be evaluated after three years.