University of Aarhus 2005
The Faculty of Social Sciences
The structure of the faculty is based on extensive autonomy for the schools, departments and centres – an autonomy that requires excellent collaboration between the individual departments. This collaboration is undergoing constant development.
The requirement in the coming years for an increase in both the number of graduates with a Master’s degree and the amount of research carried out places heavy demands on staff and management at the faculty. However, if these demands are to be met, much greater resources must be allocated to this area. Despite the willingness and positive attitude of the faculty, a number of hurdles need to be removed: completely insufficient amounts paid to the university for the number of completed years of full-time study, limited funds for social science research, salaries that are far from competitive, rigid rules for employment and the lack of or insufficient funding of continuing and further studies.
Research
The extent of the faculty’s research production continued to increase in 2005, with 770 research publications in all.
As part of the university’s endeavours to improve its publication profile, the faculty has adopted a publication strategy that places greater emphasis on particularly attractive journals in the individual disciplines.
The faculty also participated in the appointment of the so-called core areas in Danish Social Science research. After extensive efforts, the faculty recommended four core areas and one upcoming core area. The four core areas were: Applied Quantitative Economics and Financing; Power and Democracy; Man, Society and Nature; and Danish/European Capital and Market Regulations, while the upcoming core area was Organisation in the Public Sector.
2005 was also the year in which the National Centre for Register-based Research was finally incorporated into the faculty, following a very positive evaluation by an international committee.
In the university’s development contract, globalisation is one of its focus areas. The faculty’s globalisation project deals with an extremely relevant and current subject, and also aims at establishing research collaboration between faculty departments and beyond normal faculty limits. In the faculty’s other cross-disciplinary research project: Economy, Organisation and Legal Basis in the Health Sector, the steering group continued its collaboration with the PhD students associated with the project.
The share of external finance in faculty research continues to increase, and in certain areas such as Economics, it now amounts to approximately 35% of total funding.
Degree programmes
As far as the degree programmes are concerned, there were several changes and initiatives during the year. Examples are the introduction of new academic regulations for the Bachelor’s degree programmes as a result of the new Education Executive Order, and introduction of the Master’s degree programme in International Studies, in collaboration with the Faculty of Humanities.
In 2005, the number of enrolments for Bachelor’s degree programmes at the faculty again increased, to the extent that the number of new enrolments as of 1 October, increased from 965 to 1,030.
The number of Bachelor’s degree graduates decreased compared with the year before, but the faculty still accounts for one third of all Bachelor’s degree graduates at the university.
The number of Master’s degree graduates in Law, Economics, Political Science and Psychology increased to almost 600, which represents about a third of all Master’s degree graduates from the University of Aarhus in 2005. Official statistics and other surveys show that there is considerable labour market demand for holders of the faculty’s Master’s degree programmes. Unemployment is low, and employment conditions and salaries are second to none.
The development in the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes is therefore satisfactory. The same cannot be said about the development in the number of PhD students, although the number of enrolled PhD students increased from 19 in 2004 to 27 in 2005.
The faculty is therefore working on further developing the 4 + 4 model, which has turned out to both increase the number of enrolments in PhD programmes and shorten the time taken to complete them. At the same time, the faculty will try to attract more PhD students from both Danish and foreign universities. One of the methods used will be scholarships.
New initiatives within continuing and further education include the Master’s degree programme in Environment and Energy Law. It is offered in collaboration with the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, the University of Southern Denmark and the Aarhus School of Business. In addition, the Department of Psychology has entered into a five-year agreement with the Danish Association of Psychologists regarding education in research and communication as part of the association’s degree programmes for specialists.
Contribution to the knowledge society
In addition to participating in conferences and congresses, faculty staff have contributed to a large number of often high-profile public commissions, councils and committees. They have also participated as board members in the private sector, and published several books and articles that communicate faculty research to the public. The faculty’s most important communication activity, however, is undoubtedly the dissemination of knowledge through the education of a large number of highly qualified Master’s degree graduates.
Internationalisation
The faculty is host for a considerable number of foreign researchers, and many of its own academic staff have been on short-term or long-term visits abroad. The majority of the faculty’s PhD students spend at least one term at a foreign research institution. Approximately 20 foreign MSc students are enrolled every year in the Economics programme at the School of Economics and Management, and the PhD programmes also attract several foreign students.
Jobs at the faculty are advertised internationally to the extent that it is relevant. In 2005, approximately 25% of the assistant professors at the faculty had a PhD from a foreign university and were not Danish citizens. The School of Economics and Management is, in fact, ranked number 24 on an international list of departments and schools based on the employing institution’s ranking in the overall system. It is among the top five outside the USA.
Quality assurance
Quality assurance of administration, as well as study programmes, has continued and been further intensified. Similarly, PR activities have continuously been developed to attract even better qualified students to the faculty’s study programmes.
Facts for 2005
Students
New enrolments: 1,030
Number of students: 5,776
Number of PhD students: 95
Number of Bachelors: 665
Number of Masters: 598
Number of PhDs: 16
Staff (full-time equivalent)
Professors: 52
Associate professors: 88
Other academic staff: 173
Technical and administrative staff: 120
Number of doctorates: 2
Number of research publications: 770
Total number of publications: 932
Departments
Department of Political Science
Department of Psychology
School of Economics and Management
School of Law
Research centres
Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research
Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy
National Centre for Register-based Research
Degree subjects
Business Administration
Economics
Law
Political Science and Social Science
Psychology
The Faculty of Social Sciences covers the subjects Law, Economics, Political Science and Psychology.
On their way to a lecture.