Like other Danish institutions of higher education, Roskilde University (RUC)  has over the past decade been subject to a number of deep-reaching policy reforms and regulation at the national level (Hansen, 2011), including marketisation and the generalisation of English as medium of instruction. These reforms have placed strains on the Roskilde model, and led to various accomodations. The different steps in the process have been accompanied by intense debates at various levels of the organisation and in the public arena. The present study puts forward an analysis of these debates, based on documents from within RUC.

For almost half a century the Roskilde model has achieved many of the aims that the European Union sees as strategic in the area of higher education. The model has refined a concept of interdisciplinary education enabling vocational development that is practice-oriented and concrete, while remaining both reflective and innovative. This has been possible through the combination of a unique pedagogical vision and a specific curricular design. The tensions experienced at Roskilde in the face of the technical requirements of centralised policies of governance, management and quality assessment are therefore highly pertinent for the development of European strategies. 

ET2020 continues to emphasise mobility and and cross-border cooperation among its main priorities. Among other aspects, interdisciplinarity is also seen as a crucial feature (see  Recommendation 10 of the 2013 report to the European Commission on the modernisation of higher education).  At the same time, European policy stresses that higher education should match short term labour market requirements. Other tensions can be perceived between mechanisms of top-down administrative steering and standardisation in the Bologna process (Wihlborg & Teelken, 2014), on the one hand, and the desire to maintain diverse, vibrant and innovative higher education institutions across Europe, on the other.  Although the process of mutual recognition of qualifications has often been seen as a primarily technical administrative set of measures aiming to promote mobility, the deep-reaching curricular modifications have also been seen as imposing a distinct pedagogical  paradigm (Karseth, 2006).

Some of the specific characteristics of the Roskilde model derive from  the ways in which deep theoretical reflection on social issues and the root causes of situations are coupled to practice-oriented problemsolving.  Practical work is here thus closely linked to group discussions and critical thinking and problems are not seen as objectively given (cf. Bacchi, 2010). Placing problem-solving in this kind of deliberative context (Biesta, 2013), is not limited to Roskilde, but has in fact characterised much of Scandinavian higher education (Nielsen & Andreasen, 2015). The Roskilde model thus presents a proactive and highly reflective vision of practice-oriented learning that differs from trends in internationalisation which might otherwise lead to passive adaption to the needs of the job market (Karseth, 2006), and commodification of higher education (Symes & McIntyre, 2002).

Theoretical framework

The theoretical discussion in the study takes its departure in two axes of reflection. The fist axis concerns tensions in conceptualising knowledge (Osberg, Biesta, & Cilliers, 2008) and the curriculum as something given in advance, versus seeing them as negotiable and changing. Biesta (2013) speaks of the fundamental difference in seeing education as a deterministic system of inputs and outputs, versus seeing it as an open system of meaning. The second axis of reflection concerns relationships between theory- and practice-oriented approaches in higher education. While these are frequently conceptualised as opposing poles on a continuum, the Roskilde model and problem-based education in Denmark more generally (Christensen & Jensen, 2011), are interesting in that they provide alternative conceptualisations of how theory and practice can inform each other (Andersen & Heilesen, 2015).

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