Comment: University of Bureaucracy and Red Tape

At the moment I’m waiting to get a grade for my Master’s thesis.

So far I have been waiting 1 1/2 months. Since I cannot get a grade I cannot get any dagpenge (unemployment insurance, ed.), so I’m stuck.

This is just one, banal, instance of slow administration that is making a mockery of any attempt to speed up student graduation in the so-called Study Progress Reform which is now being implemented at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH).

Waiting for months

Take studying abroad for instance. I studied a semester in Spain where I had to get credits for some elective courses and for courses that had to match to the courses in my curriculum. As it’s hard to find courses abroad that fit the courses in my Danish curriculum I had to apply to my study board to get the courses accepted. This could only be done when I was in Spain, so I could get the correct info on the courses they offered at the time. This also meant I had to attend the courses in Spain and then apply to my study board and await acceptance for the courses. Applying for this took at least a month, which at the end would mean It was to late to change courses, if the courses was not accepted.

An then there is the time for getting courses taken at other universities, or just faculties, or even the same institute at UCPH, accepted as giving credit.

I have tried waiting for months to get courses accepted after they were taken and passed. I took a course at the same institute as mine and it took six months before I received a mail about getting the credits for the course.

Information is always late

I have had to do a written exam, where people could sign up to do it with or with out a computer. All signed up to do it with a computer, but somehow a mistake was made in the administration, so we all were signed up to do it without computers. We tried to talk to the administration about it, but apparently it was too late to change. On the day of the exam we were situated in a room with plenty of socket outlets, but we were still forced to write the paper without using a computer.

Getting the dates for your exams at the Faculty of Humanities is always late. You have wait more or less until December sometimes to get the date. Which makes it really hard to plan Christmas vacation.

Don’t worry about courses. You always get the information late about the courses the Faculty offers each semester. In some fields they haven’t even added a description of the courses, so the way to pick the course is by interpreting the title of the course, and guess what it’s about.

Get this admin to work

So go ahead, please tell me that Copenhagen students are the slowest to graduate: But don’t blame it on the students.

Dear University of Copenhagen, if you want to speed-up students so they graduate faster, get this administration to work.

Seriously.

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

Like us on Facebook for features, guides and tips on upcoming events. Follow us on Twitter for links to other Copenhagen academia news stories. Sign up for the University Post weekly newsletter here.