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FOTO: Paul Anthony Wilson
The bachelor’s degree on its knees
The «process of academic priorities» project is ready. A strong prioritization of master’s degrees ahead of bachelor’s degrees will be the result, but student representatives on the university board are choosing not to deal with this issue.
På norsk- We have to look beyond the small decisions. I am not counting on becoming the most popular student representative in history, Ingvild Brox Kielland stated at the university board meeting on Tuesday.
Along with the other student representative, Jomar Talsnes Heggdal, she voted to approve the strategy documents from all faculties. The documents suggest that master’s degrees should be the highest priority, both in order to raise the level of research competence at the university, and in order to attract more students.
Neither Heggdal nor Kielland commented on this commitment to master’s studies at the board meeting. The Student Parliament (SP) has, through the Student Political Platform of 2008/2009, decided that the university should make a bachelor degree that is «an autonomous and finished degree» a possibility. Kielland does not see any contradiction between the decision of the Student Parliament and what happened at the university board meeting.
- The university board has already expressed that the bachelor’s degree should be an independent degree, she states.
According to the student representatives, the process will involve prioritizations in relation to areas of study, not between degree levels. However, Vice Dean at the Faculty of Social Sciences (SV), Marianne E. Lien, has stated that SV will see an increased prioritization of master’s degrees. She argues that this will redress the imbalance caused by the focus on bachelor’s degrees in the wake of the Quality Reform.
- It has been decided that we should be a research university, and if we are to live up to this, then it is only natural that we should focus on higher degrees, she states.
