Aarhus University is to lose about 360 members of staff in the biggest-ever bulk dismissal from a Danish university. The figure includes 195 planned dismissals and 162 voluntary resignations.
The cuts follow three years of budget deficits and a warning by the university board that finances have to be balanced by 2016—requiring a cut of 225 million Danish kroner (€30.2m) to annual expenditure. Aarhus rector Brian Bech Nielsen said last month that the cuts were a consequence of a dip in government core funding.
But staff members disagree. They say a university-wide restructuring strategy pushed through by senior management in 2011 was badly planned. Martin Paldam, a professor of economics, says the structural changes, intended to raise the university into the international research elite, have lacked transparency.
“A lot of terms such as ‘globalisation’ and ‘world class’ were thrown around. But what was actually done did not match the vision,” he says. Paldam blames the 2003 reform of Danish universities, which removed reviews of senior leadership, for the situation. This means, he says, that the Aarhus leadership does not have to justify the costly changes made and the resulting cuts.
Søren Pold, an associate professor of digital aesthetics, agrees: “Money was spent on consultants, managers and branding—everything not to do with research and education.” The cuts will hit research hard, he adds.
The number of part-time academics at the university’s school of business and social sciences, and the faculty of arts, will now be subject to a strict limit. According to Nielsen, the university’s administration will also be reorganised, as this is where the opportunities for saving money are greatest. “Our clear intention is to limit the negative effects on teaching, research, talent development and knowledge exchange,” he said.
The university has cut its faculties from nine to four, meaning that research groups have merged into larger units. Lone Hansen, an associate professor of digital design, worries that the cuts will reverberate through Denmark. “What this means is that a permanent position is no longer permanent,” she says. “It is possible that this will make scientists tailor their research to themes that are very ‘now’ in order to make themselves employable.”