By David Vranicar
dav@adm.au.dk
If you’re a foreign student already studying in Denmark, consider yourself lucky. It may be tougher to come here in the future.
A recent agreement between the Danish People’s Party and the Danish government will require foreign students to prove that they have at least DKK 64,000 (about €8,500) before coming to Denmark. This would be a marked increase from the DKK 4,200 per month, or DKK 42,000 (€5,633) per academic year, currently required of foreign students.
The agreement, which both liberals and conservatives expect to be ratified by parliament within months, would exempt students from Nordic and European countries. But students from other nations would have to provide documentation that they have savings of roughly DKK 64,600 – equivalent to one year “SU,” the student grant paid by the Danish government to Danish university students.
Jesper Langballe, a member of Parliament for the conservative Danish People’s Party that helped draft this legislation, says that the agreement is rooted in economic concerns.
“Denmark, like all European countries, has been in the finance crisis,” Langballe says. “This new measure is part of a major plan for making the country’s economy stronger. We don’t know exactly what the consequence will be, but we are sure it would make universities’ and the country’s economic situation better.”
But there could be hidden costs to strengthening the economy. Aarhus University’s International Director, Kristian Thorn, worries that this agreement will make it more difficult for AU to attract ambitious and intelligent international students – students that he claims are integral to the university.
“It’s very important for our strategy to attract the brightest international students,” Thorn says, “because we need the brains, we need the human capital. This emphasis of this agreement is on who can pay, but we’re interested in bringing in the brightest students from around the world.”
While Langballe and others support the proposal – including Denmark’s Immigration Minister, Birthe Rønn Hornbech – there are concerns that it could have an erosive effect on Danish education.
Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen, a member of Parliament for Denmark’s left-wing Enhedslisten Party, worries that excluding foreigners would be bad for Danes.
“It’ll mean that we will close up and build big walls around the Danish education systems and the Danish universities,” Schmidt-Nielsen says, “and that will make it impossible (for foreign students) to go here. And that’s not only a problem for the foreign students, but also the Danish students because we won’t have a chance to learn from them.”
“It’s all about this idea of globalisation and internationalisation,” adds Mikkel Zeuthen, the President of Denmark’s National Union of Students. “Our experience is that when you have foreigners around when you study, they always bring in some new perspectives that are beneficial to Danish students.”
The Danish People’s Party cites the financial crisis as a rationale for this proposal, but Schmidt-Nielson says that it is more about exclusion than economics.
“This idea,” she says, “that you should come up with this kind of money is just to avoid people coming here.”
Langballe doesn’t deny that the plan is designed to slow the influx of foreigners into Denmark. But he insists that there is more to it.
“Yes, that’s some of the intention,” Langballe says. “But it’s also to be sure that the students who come here will be able to look after themselves in an economic way. You see, when we (are lacking) money, it would be stupid that the world could study in Denmark for free.”
