ANCIENT GREEK AMONG THE FEW PROGRAMMES TO BE REOPENED IN COPENHAGEN

Today´s first piece of news presents a mixed picture of the developments taking place at the Faculty of Humanities of Copenhagen University. On the one hand, we are pleased to let you know that the study programme of Ancient Greek will be reopened in 2017. In this regard, FIEC would like to thank all those who made an effort in order to save Ancient Greek at this important European University. We strongly hope that professional education in the field of Classical Studies will be provided in the long term and we are grateful to the University of Copenhagen for reconsidering the issue. On the other hand, we are truly sorry to learn that the majority of the thirteen Study Programmes in question find themselves in a much more precarious situation: Some will be merged with other fields, with consequences we cannot foresee; and others will be closed altogether.

As could be read in our blog, in January Copenhagen´s head of the Faculty of Humanities had decided to close thirteen smaller undergraduate programmes due to a significant cut in funding by the Danish government. Accordingly, all programmes affected, including Ancient Greek, will not admit any new students in 2016. However, after various factors as well as potential consequences have been considered in the course of the last months, a new plan has been devised and publicly announced:

Ancient Greek, Eskimology, American Indian Language and Culture Studies, and Contemporary India and South Asia Studies are the only study programmes to be reopened in 2017. These four are said to be retained not because of a higher number of students, but because “the university either has a national obligation or uniquely strong academic environments”. At the same time, the new plan still has devastating effects upon several other study programmes in the field of culture and language: While there is still some hope for five smaller programmes that might be merged to form larger area studies, “Finnish, Indology, Tibetology and South East Asian Studies, comprising Thai and Indonesian, will all close as full study programmes”.

Please follow the link to see more detailed information. Of course, we will keep you updated with the latest news about this matter.