President Anders Bjarklev’s Commemoration Day speech

Your Excellencies, Minister, dear guests and colleagues, magnificent students, ladies and gentlemen.

It is my pleasure to bid you all a heart-felt welcome to one of the year’s absolute highlights at DTU—our Commemoration Day celebrations which, in line with tradition, we are hosting in collaboration with Polyteknisk Forening (PF student association).

I would like to start by sharing some of DTU’s most significant achievements from the past year, which are a true testament to a university on the rise. We are delighted to note that student applications to DTU in 2013 were up six per cent for BSc programmes and 12 per cent for BEng programmes compared to 2012. Applications for MSc programmes also increased by 14 per cent compared to the previous year.

In the field of research, we have witnessed a six per cent rise in the number of publications in relation to 2012, and in the Times University Rankings 2013–14, DTU has climbed no fewer than 32 places to 117th in the world—positioning us as the best-placed Danish university on the list.

DTU increased the number of active agreements with the business community by eight per cent in comparison with 2012, and on the Leiden Rankings, the University is positioned at no. 6 in the world measured on commercial partnerships, as calculated on co-publications with companies.

Finally, I would like to point out that the turnover from scientific advice in relation to international authorities is up 19 per cent on 2012.

Moreover, there are some other figures that are relevant to emphasize in relation to the increasing number of students. It is pertinent to note that employment prospects for engineers remain particularly rosy. This statement is based on 2011 forecasts from Danmarks Ingeniørforening (the Danish Society of Engineers, IDA), which suggest that in 2020, Denmark will be facing a shortfall of no fewer than 13,000 engineers.

Looking at the current development of DTU, there are some even more tangible indicators to highlight. For all those who work or study at DTU on a daily basis—and for our guests who of course visit us at broader intervals—our extensive construction activities are both a telling and an occasionally slightly challenging factor on our campus. Because there is a great deal going on at the moment, I’m pleased to say.

We have completed out new teaching facility, buidling 127. We have taken the first, giant step in the context of our large new Life Science and Bioengineering building, which will unite the DTU Food, DTU Vet and DTU Aqua departments in 2016/17. It think it is well worth noting that not only will the new building provide researchers and students with access to state-of-the-art facilities, but it will also signal DTU’s commitment to new, sustainable construction.

Through the results achieved and the investment in new buildings, DTU will also develop further as an attractive partner for international alliance universities, and we will continue to benefit Denmark by attracting talented students from both home and abroad.

It is also pleasing to note an additional reinforcement of the partnership with DTU’s alliance university KAIST in Korea, and that we have established new MSc programmes in partnership with our Nordic5Tech partners. Similarly, DTU and its Eurotech partners have strengthened their shared initiatives and presence in the context of the EU.

We believe in the importance of allowing DTU students to develop their international relations early in their careers, and in encouraging all new DTU students to spend a semester studying abroad.

So how are things looking regarding our students’ desire to travel? We can state that more than 450 DTU students studied at one of our partner universities in 2013—representing a 51 per cent increase in relation to the previous year.

At DTU, we have also celebrated the opening of our Climate KIC: DTU is hosting the Nordic Co-Location Centre within this European platform for innovation in a strong circle of partners comprising companies and other universities. The Climate KIC is focused on market-ready solutions to the climate change-related challenges that society is facing. These solutions are based on innovation, education and entrepreneurship, and it is in this arena that our students have the opportunity to combine their academic expertise across subject boundaries and national borders, and invite others to join them in developing the sustainable society of tomorrow.
So we can take pride in a great many positive aspects with regard to DTU’s international partnership work. However, even on a day devoted to celebration such as this, it is important to keep a weather eye out for threatening clouds on the horizon—and unfortunately, there are a couple of these that may well challenge our students’ motivation for studying abroad.

A Study Progress Reform package has been introduced in Denmark. The underlying idea behind this is a political desire to push students through the education system faster and more efficiently so they can start to fill positions on the labour market more quickly. This is a perspective we can certainly understand, and we at DTU will work consciously to help our students through their studies as best we can. We are also optimistic, and believe it is realistic that DTU’s MSc Eng students will be able to cut their prescribed 5-year study programme by an average of 2.4 months, in line with requests from the relevant Danish ministry.
What we find harder to understand, however, is the excessive level of micro-management that has accompanied implementation of the Study Progress Reform.

In this context, I would like to highlight just a few aspects, such as the requirement on us at DTU to hold many more than 500 extra annual examinations to give students an extra attempt to pass an exam they failed just a few weeks previously. These extra examinations are intended to replace our well-functioning system whereby students were allowed to resit exams half a year later. It is even more difficult to understand is that students—who may have got off to a less than perfect start on their studies—not only have to resit exams in all failed subjects as early as the following semester, but also have to follow a full new syllabus. We are convinced that this neither promotes the desire to study, nor raises the likelihood of students actually completing their study programmes.
The problem with this type of micro-management is that it forces the universities to devote significant extra effort to general initiatives that have little to do with their own study programmes, terms and conditions—or, for that matter, current issues. As such, it is highly likely that these initiatives will have a less beneficial effect than if the individual universities had been allowed to base their measures on specific conditions and their own, actual problems.

I would like to emphasize that there is nothing we at DTU would rather do than to help find solutions to the current societal challenges, but we are far from convinced that the best approach is blindly to enforce a ‘one size fits all’ solution within the sector.
It would be much better to take the time to identify local challenges and then require us to find the solutions ourselves—solutions that would be much more efficient in reducing student drop-out rates; solutions that do not risk dissuading students from studying abroad; and solutions that do not limit their opportunities to start their own businesses if they choose to do so.

All in all, I think it is high time that we in Denmark change our point of reference in relation to our students. To understand what I mean by this, I would ask you all to think about how our young students in Denmark have been portrayed in the media over the past six months. Much has been said and written claiming that students are lazy, that they cannot function independently, and that they are simply looking for ‘the line of least resistance’.

In other words: Students today aren’t what they used to be! – Well thank heavens for that, I say! Today’s students have become much better at dealing with contemporary challenges than students in years gone by. DTU students are hard-working and independent, and they are individuals who, in every sense, desire to create a better future for themselves and for others through dedicated commitment to their studies, involvement in student politics, work in their free time, leisure time activities, travel and much more besides.

This being the case, we need to distance ourselves from the myth of students as a group of people who neither can nor want to achieve anything, and focus instead on the realities of the situation, delight in their talents and enthusiasm, and support them in achieving their goals.

For example, we need simply listen to what our international partners are saying about DTU students. Which is: “Please send more! DTU students are a huge academic and social benefit to the universities they visit.”
Or listen to some of our lecturers when they say: “We have never been able to ‘pour as much into them’ as we can today.”
And it is precisely on the basis of our students’ great talents and skill that I would like to end my speech by sharing a dream with you. It is the dream of a none-too-distant future, where jobs are again being created in Denmark and the rest of Europe—jobs not just for engineers, but for many different professional groups. It is also the dream of us no longer continuing to lose ground with regard to jobs in the production sector, but turning the situation around and actually creating new, exciting enterprises founded on original ideas.

Pessimists may have a tendency to claim this will be very difficult, because we don’t have the entrepreneurial culture required.
Nevertheless, I am witnessing a huge shift in attitude at the moment. If I think back to the years of my youth, and the ambitions my contemporaries had with regard to a profession, then pretty much everyone I knew had his or her sights set on landing an exciting job at an existing company. The situation is very different today. When I am out and about on the freshers’ trips and I ask the new students whether they have considered starting their own business, between one third and a half of them reply without hesitation in the affirmative.

I believe this is something akin to a revolution in attitude, which shows how strongly students are drawn to creating something of their own. And it could be really big!

We are already seeing the precursors to this development (Image 4). The number of start-ups based on DTU ideas more than doubled from 2012 to 2013. In fact, a total of 19 new businesses were established, of which ten were started by our students, and nine by DTU staff.

So the future is looking bright. Because when the winds of change start to blow, DTU students don’t start to build shelters—on the contrary, they invent mobile wind gauges instead. That is just one example of a product from the new student start-ups ... The others are just as inventive.

I hope that once again this year, I have succeeded in sharing with you the image of an elite technical university. A DTU in 2014, where the ambitions are as high as ever, and where the results fully live up to these ambitions.

A DTU where serious individuals, companies and public sector organizations find a competent hand reaching out to them, and where we are working together to be of true benefit to society.