New students caught up in universities' CPR number workaround

It seems like a sleek administrative work-around. An extra, only nominal, personal CPR number to get the student logged in and going.

But it is the cause and symptom of a series of follow-on problems for students: Because the students who are then enrolled in their courses and examinations, are not compatible with new user name and accounts on the online system KUnet.dk.

“Sometimes if students have been registered before, whether as university employees or receiving some kind of grant, the system shows a mistake when updating the CPR and this is solved by creating a new user. This is not the same for every case, but sometimes happens. It’s just how the system is,” said a representative from Student Services, when contacted by the University Post to find out more about the matter.

When international students enrol in a programme at a Danish university, they are assigned a provisional pseudo-personal registration (CPR) number, and given a temporary mailing address at their respective faculty. Once an international student has a permanent address in Copenhagen, they are supposed to contact Student Services so that their information can be updated.

See previous comment: No permanent address, no CPR, no life .

Problems registering for exams

Piotr Grześkowiak and Aleksandra Kuropatnicka, international students in Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen applying for the Danish study grant SU, noticed that their personal information was not updated on KUnet. After some calls to Student Services, they were assigned new UCPH usernames. But, their old accounts were removed, which held the registration for all of their coursework and exams.

“To have the accounts working properly took around three weeks. If I hadn’t checked before the exam, I wouldn’t have been able to write it, as the wrong account had been signed up,” says Piotr.

Sandro Gasciarini, another student at the faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, experienced some problems when applying for ‘Ungdomskort’ – a monthly public transportation card for students. He had previously attempted to update his address information.

”I had sent the scanned copy of my yellow [CPR, ed.] card a long time ago, but when I checked the address was not updated,” he explains.

Beware of the pseudo-CPR

When Sandro called the IT department for help, he was told that there are two types of addresses a student can register: a primary one and a secondary address. Initially students are only assigned a secondary address, at their home faculty.

When the primary address is registered (together with the CPR) it sometimes does not appear by default on KUnet. When fixed, any change of address should synchronize automatically with the Copenhagen municipality’s database.

These pseudo-CPR numbers are updated manually by staff at the Students Service. Sandro’s username did not have to be replaced for another one, as it was the case for Aleksandra and Piotr.

According to Student Services the best way to avoid problems during the study period is to be aware of your address within the university database, and any notification e-mails from IT and Student Services.

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

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