Input from Technical Sciences to the AU institutional plan

The senior management team at AU has drawn up a draft institutional plan, and this will now be submitted for comments to the Faculty Liaison Committee, the Academic Council, the faculty management team and our student organisations. After the round of comments, for which the deadline is 3 December, the draft and comments will be presented to the AU board.

The final draft will be submitted to the Ministry of Higher Education and Science by the end of the year at the latest. The final political decision on what is to happen is expected in spring 2022.

Only then will Tech know the starting point for the further process and the timetable for when it is expected to be possible to implement the decisions at Tech. This is not likely until 2026 onwards.

Teaching campus in Foulum

Input from Tech has two main areas. More study programmes for Campus Foulum and a slowdown in admissions to the engineering area.

The main input for the institutional plan is to create a strong, modern teaching campus in Foulum, which will include veterinary medicine and Animal Science. In the long term, it will also result in the relocation of agrobiology to Foulum within an expected timeframe of 4-6 years.

Tech's four engineering departments will not be affected directly by either relocation or reduction. Indirectly, however, the departments will be affected, as the government's initiative means that growth in the recruitment of engineering students is not possible for the moment. Freezing admissions of engineering students therefore challenges Tech’s possibilities to meet the ever-increasing need for graduates from the technical degree programmes.

Admissions closed for students to Agro Environmental Management

As part of Tech's input to the AU Institutional plan, the faculty has suggested that, in the long term, admissions of students to Agro Environmental Management are to close.

This is primarily because, in the new unemployment-based resizing, the degree programme has been designated a maximum intake of six students a year, which Tech considers to be too few to maintain a full Master’s degree programme. Closure will not affect current students.

Tech will seek to continue the core academic elements of the degree programme within the framework of Agrobiology, which is to be relocated to Campus Foulum within an expected time frame of 4-6 years. The aim is to create a strong, modern teaching campus in Foulum, which, in addition to Agrobiology, will also include veterinary medicine and Animal Science, with expected total admissions of 150 students a year.