Apparently the Danish government considers rewarding the universities for the number of master students that get employed after the education instead of — as they do now — for the number of students actually completing a master. (Link [da])

Once again our government shows absolutely no understanding for science — they think it’s all about filling jobs and making some of the green — but they fail to see that science may just as well be a passion — I know it is for a lot of scientists. The state pays for our education, so of course they expect to get something back, but they may end up getting far less back than ever, because it will mean that the departments will have to constantly think about what “the state needs” or “what can give jobs” and modify the classes to match that, which is not always a Good Thing™. This may on long term have the effect that studies such as linguistics and other weird, small studies will cease to exist, because there simply is not a whole lot of jobs for us linguists out there and linguistics solely aimed at getting a job is just not that interesting. It’s not uncommon that linguists mix their profession with something else, say a specific language — or programming. So what if they get employed as translators from that specific language to their native language or they get a job at Google working on e.g. Google Sets (which will require some knowledge of semantics)? Will that count? Who’s going to decide if it counts? What if I complete my major in linguistics and get a job sweeping sidewalks? Will the Department of Linguistics at the University of Aarhus be “rewarded” for that?

On top of that, it may result in the “wanted” studies becoming flooded with applicants because “it’s all about getting a job”.

Ass-hats!