"University Reform and Its Potential, Unintended Implications for Student Competencies and Employability

The paper is a critical examination of the largest national reform of the system of (higher) education in Denmark in 25 years. The aim is to explore the political ideas and values that have shaped the reform and discuss their implications for the societal valorization of the educations embedded in human and social sciences, and the relationship between the university and the state.
The paper unravels the prominent ideational streams underpinning the reform. Selected educational policy documents published in connection with the recent reform of the Danish system for higher education (published in the period 2022-2025) and the problematizations inherent in these documents will be examined. The paper thus shows how different ideational streams valorize and de-valorize different disciplines and educations, thus shaping the future of higher education in ways that challenges the idea of the autonomy of the university to new extends.
We are inspired by Carol Bacchi's “What’s the problem reprensented to be”-approach to policy analysis (Bacchi 2009, Bacchi & Goodwin 2016). This approach to policy analysis implies an interest in problematization, that is how social phenomenon comes into being and is represented as a problem in policy making. This approach calls for a second-order analysis of the reality and solutions projected in policy, which draws the analytical focus to the policy process itself as a co-creator of social reality.