Danish welfare state needs your hormones

You are a cash cow for Denmark. You pay fees to universities, you spend money in the shops and you return taxes to the taxman.

And if you stay on in Denmark after your studies, you will fill out a gap in an increasingly old-age Danish labour market.

This is according to Annette Galskjøtt of ThinkTankTalents, a consultant firm behind a new Copenhagen Campus project which is designed to attract foreign students.

Love makes the economy go round

But what is it that will lure you to settle in this small, cold corner of Europe?

Love.

»International students tend to hang out with others internationals, but a Danish love affair is a great way to get to know the locals. According to what we have seen and heard, love is the number one motive for staying in the country,« says Annette Galskjøtt.

Love camp

»It is not easy to become integrated in Danish social circles. Having a Danish boyfriend or girlfriend is the best way to get a ready-made network,« she continues.

According to Galskjøtt, your love is a boon to the Danish economy.

»International students fill the gaps in the labour market that Danes cannot. In 2019, Denmark will lack 105,000 academics,« she says citing data from the think tank Economic Council of the Labour Movement AE.

In this sense the new campus can be a kind of ‘love camp’.

DKK one billion at stake

»We need students from abroad to stay here. That is why a campus for Danes and international students is a good idea. If they live together, then there is a place to meet and maybe get together,« she explains.

16,000 foreign students come to Denmark to study, either as exchange students or on a full degree course every year.

If Denmark was able to retain just 10 per cent of these as skilled workers in Denmark, it would increase the Danish Gross Domestic Product by nearly a billion kroner a year, according to ThinkTankTalents’ preliminary study for the new Copenhagen Campus.

luci@adm.ku.dk

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