Universities press ahead with new masters and other reforms

Danish universities are working actively towards the implementation of thoroughgoing higher education reforms, including industry-focused one-year masters degrees, that are likely to change the higher education landscape for both domestic and international students when they come into effect in the 2028 academic year.

Despite being highly controversial when approved by parliament in 2023, as reported by University World News, the new degree formats have found some support among individual academics, but others are less optimistic.

The reforms – approved by parliament in June 2023 – are the most extensive in higher education in three decades.

They require that 20% of master degrees offered in Denmark are business-orientated qualifications (erhvervskandidatuddannelser) of one or two years (120 ECTS) duration, 10% are masters degrees of 75 ECTS points (one year), while 70% remain as two-year candidate (research-based) masters degrees. Bachelor degrees are to be reduced by 10% across all universities.

A pre-condition for the original reforms – pushed by the Social Democratic Party – was that the masters degree should be opened up to more international students and that a greater proportion be taught in English.

It is anticipated that the reforms will mean greater competition to gain admission into bachelor degrees because of reduced availability and cuts in intake. Students will also have to specifically select a bachelor degree programme that qualifies them for admission to their desired masters degree.

The pressure on higher education institutions to implement the reforms comes against the backdrop of relatively poor election results by the party that originally pushed for the reforms.

The Social Democratic Party won the most votes in the country's general election on 24 March 2026 but failed to secure a majority after taking only 21.9% of the vote, down from 27.5% in 2022, in the party’s weakest performance in more than a century.

Weeks after the general election, at the time of this writing, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (Social Democrat) was yet to form a new government.

Accreditation of new degrees

In December 2025, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research approved the accreditation of 18 new masters degrees at universities in Sønderborg, Odense, Aarhus and Copenhagen, further speeding up the reform implementation process.

The statement noted that ordinary masters degree programmes of 120 ECTS will still be available, but new options are also available.

“Future masters students will have new and flexible opportunities to become a master in everything from health economics to software engineering. There will be new opportunities to combine study and work, and it will be possible to complete a masters degree of 75 ECTS,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said the masters programmes arise “from a desire for more flexibility and quality in the higher education system from a broad political majority with the Agreement on the framework for the reform of university education in Denmark” from 2023.

“Among other things, it will be possible to implement a new type of ‘1+2’ business degree programme, where the first year is full-time study with the possibility of SU [Danish state educational grant and loan scheme], followed by a two-year company course, where part-time study is combined with relevant employment.

“This is a flexibility that both the business community and universities have requested, and which is targeted at the engineering field and a number of other IT/STEM programmes,” the ministry said, adding: “It will also be possible to complete masters programmes of 75 ECTS, and the selection of professional masters programmes, where studies are combined with relevant employment, will be expanded.”

At Aarhus University, the new degrees accredited by the ministry include biomedical technology, civil and architectural engineering, computer engineering; electrical engineering, biotechnology and chemical engineering, mechanical engineering – all 120 ECTS points – and applied computer science (75 ECTS).

The IT-University in Copenhagen has two degrees in advanced software engineering (120 ECTS) accredited, while Copenhagen University (KU) has one in computer science (120 ECTS).

At the University of Southern Denmark, eight masters degrees of 120 ECTS were accredited (in robot systems, software engineering, mechatronics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, health economics (75 ECTS) and economics and business (also 75 ECTS).

Announcing the accreditation, Minister of Education and Research Christina Egelund said: “We have reached a milestone in our work to provide students with more flexible paths to a masters degree. At the same time, both students and Danish business can be pleased that a large part of the new educational opportunities will be within IT/STEM, where there is a high demand for qualified labour.”

She noted that several of the programmes would be in English and provided an “opportunity to attract international talent”.

Universities update their websites

Meanwhile, universities are in the process of updating their webpages to communicate their new masters degree offerings in the different categories – and the new competitive entrance requirements for bachelor degrees.

According to the new institutional plan of Aalborg University (AAU), eight one-year masters degree programmes of 75 ECTS credits – three of which are brand new studies – will be completely or partially restructured with effect from 2028.

There will be an end to admissions of new students to 14 masters degree programmes in 2028 to 2031 and two bachelor degree programmes in 2026, while 40 degree programmes will be offered in 2028, both as regular masters degree programmes of two years’ duration and as three-year business masters degree programmes. Three degree programmes will be offered as other types of business masters degree programmes.

According to notes from a January board meeting of KU, the university is projected in 2028 to have 4,345 study places for the two-year masters degree while 1,827 places will be given over to the shorter, reformed degree format.

In 2025, 450 study places at the bachelor degree level were cut, equal to 7%.

In return for implementing the reforms, KU receives DKK6.1 million, the notes say. “KU has chosen to prioritise the funding for the employment of eight administrative full-time staff, which will support the implementation of the graduate reform.

“The university management has also decided that half of the administration reform's proceeds for 2026 of DKK52.5 million will go to finance scientific staff time for the implementation of the graduate reform and development of the new education landscape,” the note stated.

According to KU’s independent University Post newspaper, the original 2025 plan – which involved a “partial restructuring” of subjects like mathematics and physics to reduce them from 120 to 75-ECTS masters programmes – has been replaced in the Faculty of Science by a series of new, specialised one-year masters programmes that are aimed more directly at the labour market.

New degrees set to be a ‘banger’

The Faculty of Science’s associate dean for education, Andreas de Neergaard, said faculty management asked heads of studies to draw up shortened versions of their traditional 120-ECTS masters programmes.

The heads countered the request by keeping the traditional subjects in the 120-ECTS format and instead proposed making a series of reduced sector-specialised 75-ECTS masters degrees, according to the report.

“The faculty has therefore now proposed something called applied analytcal chemistry, rather than a shortened version of chemistry and biodata science as well as biotechnology, rather than a shorter biology masters,“ University Post said.

These 75 ECT masters degrees at KU include: data stewardship; applied analytical chemistry; bio data science; biotechnology; computer science-economics; geoinformatics; nature management; machine learning and artificial intelligence.

According to De Neergaard, the 75-ECTS programme “will be a narrower, but also a deeper”, course of study.

“I’ve been saying this for two years now: these 75-ECTS masters programmes are going to be a ‘banger’. When people can see that graduates from 75-ECTS programmes are just as capable as those from 120-ECTS ones, I think we’ll see a big shift towards the 75-ECTS masters programmes,” De Neergaard is quoted saying.

Challenges presented by reforms

Brian Arly Jacobsen, an associate professor in the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at KU and chair of DM University, a union for academic professionals, told University World News that the implementation of the reform of masters programmes at the university reflected a broader political ambition to make higher education more flexible and more closely aligned with labour market needs.

“The development of specialised 75 ECTS programmes at the Faculty of Science is an interesting shift away from simply shortening existing degrees towards creating new, more targeted educational formats,” he said.

He admitted that the reform has been controversial. “From the perspective of the Danish Association of Masters and PhDs (DM), there are good reasons to reconsider key elements of the reform,” he said.

“In particular, concerns have been raised that shortened masters degrees risk weakening academic depth and research-based teaching, and that the political requirement to restructure a fixed share of programmes limits universities’ academic autonomy.”

Arly Jacobsen said whether the reforms become “a success story” would depend on several factors.

“On the positive side, more focused programmes may offer clearer professional profiles and faster transitions into employment. However, there is also a risk of earlier and narrower specialisation, which may reduce graduates’ long-term adaptability.

“A key challenge will be the implementation of the industry masters programmes, which rely heavily on strong and sustained partnerships with employers. This introduces a dependency on external actors that universities do not fully control, and it may create tensions between academic and labour market logics,” he said.

Arly Jacobsen said several political parties had signalled that they were open to revisiting the reform. “From a DM perspective, a reasonable adjustment would be to make shorter masters programmes and industry masters programmes optional rather than mandatory and to reconsider the sector dimensioning that reduces student intake.

“Universities should have the flexibility to develop programmes that make sense academically, research-wise, and societally – not be constrained by a single political model,” Arly Jacobsen said.

Consequences for students

Esben Bjørn Salmonsen, a former president of the national union of students in Denmark (DSF), who was a member, together with the rectors of the eight Danish universities, of the Candidate Committee working out recommendations for the implementation of the reform for the ministry, told University World News it was understandable that universities were hoping for the success of the one-year masters.

“But all the problems regarding the reform are still in place – the workload of 75 ECTS within a year, the fact that the thesis should be written over the summer, and many more politically created problems,” he said.

“So, I’m glad that the universities are aiming at making quality education. So maybe this form of education is a ‘banger’ for the universities and hopefully for the companies,” he said in reference to De Neergaard’s reported comments. “But the students will suffer from the consequences,” Bjørn Salmonsen said.

Professor Hanne Leth Andersen, former rector of Roskilde University and former chair of the Universities Denmark education committee, who was also a member of the Candidate Committee working out recommendations for the implementation of the reform for the ministry alongside rectors of the other Danish universities, told University World News that giving life to the one-year masters universities needed to develop new, more targeted programme formats and make the right choices regarding the types of programmes and subject areas that these should apply to.

“One of the aims of the reform was to offer free further or continuing education to graduates of the one-year masters programme; it is therefore important to consider where the need for further training is likely to arise most quickly because of new developments, for example, in the fields of technology or business.”

She said graduates of the more narrowly targeted one-year masters programmes risk missing the competence of “taking independent responsibility for their own professional development and specialisation” – which is part of the Danish and European Qualification Framework (EQF) at master level 7.

“Masters-level graduates are expected to be able to handle work and development situations that are complex, unpredictable and require new approaches, according to the international Bologna system.

“I agree with the DM that universities should have the flexibility to develop programmes that make sense academically, research-wise, and societally.

“Universities’ freedom and autonomy should correspond to the aim of the university reform back in 2003, within a framework set by the government and a collaboration about geographic specialisations – with less steering by numbers and short-sighted development.”

Leth Andersen said that research-based education should develop critical thinking and creativity within the different fields for the future development of companies and society.

“This also marks a distinctive difference to the Danish university colleges that have now been given one-year professional master programmes for the further professional development of nurses, schoolteachers, and other groups,” she noted.