37 MARTINDALE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE that comes along with students from different cultural backgrounds as well as the tuition they would be contributing. Specifically, these international students tend to take advantage of the reduced tuition to attain higher levels of tertiary education: 36% of doctoral students in Denmark are international students versus the OECD average, 25% (OECD, 2019). This means that Danish universities are not counteracting the shortage of Danish students pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees as fully as they might. Furthermore, once international students finish their programs, 26% of them leave within three months and 38% leave within 21 months (ICEF, 2018). Accepting more international students was intended to help remedy some of the country’s economic shortfalls; however, it seems to have resulted in more of a burden on the Danish economy, while not really resolving the employment shortages in certain professional fields. By way of summarizing the issues, OECD indicators show a definite discrepancy between how much Denmark is investing in tertiary education and the number of Danish students who are completing any level of tertiary education, let alone master’s and doctoral programs. At an equivalent of $18,370 per tertiary student, Denmark spends the seventh highest of the 34 OECD countries. Overall, this equates to Denmark spending 1.55% of its GDP on tertiary education, placing them third out of OECD countries, which spend on average 0.93% of their GDP. Although these large expenditures have yielded results (between 2000 and 2021, there was a 20% increase of people ages 24 to 34 with degrees in tertiary education in Denmark), the rest of the OECD saw a 21% increase with a much lower expenditure (OECD, 2023). These numbers are the consequence of societal norms that do not enforce a strict college timeline as do other countries as well as the presence of a vocational education system that was the chief developmental focus of the later part of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first century within the EU. The resulting strains on the economy are exacerbated by the over-representation of non-Danish students taking advantage of free schooling. All the while, the Danish labor force still experiences a lack of educated workers in health care, engineering, and education. Proposed solutions Denmark has a variety of challenges pertaining to tertiary education, which it must address to maintain the integrity of its workforce. One of these issues includes improving the economic incentive for Danish students to seek white-collar jobs that require bachelor’s and higher degrees. A second is that Denmark must find a way to make white-collar jobs more appealing to a population that prioritizes a positive work-life balance. More substantially, educational leaders must adapt vocational education to ease the transition from vocational to tertiary education. Finally, tertiary institutions must implement systems to dissuade international students from taking advantage of the education system. Since 2000, Denmark and the OECD have focused on bolstering their educational attainment rates, especially when it comes to tertiary education. However, the COVID-19 pandemic provided some invaluable lessons. For instance, it emphasized the increased job security that comes with an upper-level education and career, with unemployment increasing by 1.3% for people who had only an upper secondary education but decreasing by 0.2% for people with tertiary education during the pandemic (OECD, 2022). The Ministry of Employment and the labor unions should emphasize these statistics to the Danish public through advertisements to remind them that the job market has moved into a new age and that tertiary education provides workers with skill sets and flexibility to adapt to the changing needs of the job market. Furthermore, this information should be directly disseminated through the Ministry of Children and Education and the Ministry of Higher Education and Science to secondary educators so they can properly tailor their curriculum and guide students. This is an especially important message to convey since Denmark’s current COVID-19 economic recovery plan emphasizes investment in green energy and digital development (European Commission, 2022b). This movement will require hundreds of new STEM graduates working in support of Denmark’s plan to remain on the cutting edge of development, while continuing to bolster its economy and relieve the pressure on its social safety net. The pandemic has also helped show that most white-collar jobs can be completed remotely or in a hybrid fashion. By allowing employees to work from home and investing money in equipment to foster remote work, Danish companies can attract more candidates who value work-life balance. In addition, graduates may still choose to spend time abroad while also completing remote on-boarding and training so that they may seamlessly reintegrate to the Danish labor force upon return to the country. One of the most important changes, one that could be readily implemented, would be to enhance and 1 For more on diversity in Denmark, see Ayambem’s article in this volume.
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