The University of Aarhus

International university

With more than 20,000 bachelor and master degree students, 800 PhD students, 2,500 open-education students and approx. 7,000 employees, the University of Aarhus has as many users as there are residents in a large provincial town, being, so to speak, more like a town within a town.
The university has successfully pursued the same architectural style for 75 years, and the distinctive yellow-brick buildings in the beautiful green University Park are internationally known and recognised. In January 2006, the University of Aarhus buildings and park were selected as one of twelve architectural pieces to be included in the Danish Ministry of Culture’s Canon of Danish Art and Culture issued in 2006.

Five faculties and sixty study programmes
So what exactly happens behind those yellow-brick walls? Research and teaching activities are organised into twentynine departments and a total of five faculties. The board is the supreme authority of the university and appoints the rector.

The university’s research activities cover a variety of fields and take place in laboratories and libraries as well as in the field. A growing number of areas are seeing close collaboration with the business community, both in Denmark and abroad.

The University of Aarhus offers about sixty differ-ent study programmes. These include subjects such as astrophysics, medicine, Arabic, Euro-pean culture studies and economics. Most study programmes comprise a three-year bachelor degree followed by a two-year master degree and finally an optional three-year PhD degree.

Nobel Prize and international recognition

When the Nobel Prize in chemistry was award-ed to Emeritus Professor Jens Chr. Schou in 1997 for his identification of the sodium-potassium pump, the quality of the research con-ducted at the University of Aarhus received the highest international recognition.

In recent years, the high quality of the university’s research and teaching activities has been confirmed by a number of international assessments. No. 1 among universities in Scandinavia within the natural sciences, and no. 1 in Den-mark and no. 3 among universities in Scandina-via within the health sciences. The School of Economics and Management is among the 25 best in the world, while the Department of Political Science is one of the five best in Europe. In 2005, the University of Aarhus was one of the 200 best universities in the world.

City and university
“University studies in Jutland” started in 1928 with 78 students. The university continues to operate in close collaboration with the city’s administration, business community and institutions. Science Park Aarhus and the IT City of Katrinebjerg are good examples of this colla-boration.

See more: www.au.dk