05 - Denmark - Types of institution

Higher education comprises a university sector and a college sector, i.e. the professionally oriented higher education sector and there are four types of institutions offering higher education programmes:

• Academies of professional higher education (offering short-cycle programmes)
• University Colleges (offering medium-cycle programmes)
• Universities (offering long-cycle programmes)
• Institutions for educations in the arts

Short – and medium-cycle higher education

At the moment structural changes on institutional level is taking place. These change affects the entire system of higher education. Among other things all short-cycle-higher education will be concentrated on 10 Erhvervsakademier. The Erhvervsakademier will be seperated from the vocational/business colleges, but still work in close cooperation with the colleges.

Futher more the major part of the medium-cycle-education will be concentrated on 7 University Colleges.

Long-cycle higher education

The new university structure includes 8 universities, 5 of which are multi-faculty universities. The other 3 universities specialize in fields such as engineering (The Technical University of Denmark), information technology (The IT University) and business studies (Copenhagen Business School).

Educations in the arts

Tertary education programmes in the arts are offered at 21 institutions under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture. The institutions are highly diversified, and offer programmes within music, creative art, architecture, dance, theatre etc. The institutions are either self-governing or state-owned.

Eurydice - the information network on education in Europe