Case competition: Make students reflect on their choice before applying for a degree programme
How do you reduce dropout rates on higher education degree programmes? This was the challenge the Ministry of Higher Education and Science presented to the students on the Bachelor’s degree programme in public policy at the Department of Economics and Business Economics and the Department of Political Science at Aarhus BSS. Emil Jøhnke Handberg, Volmer Jahnsen, Nikolaj Corlin and Andreas Sejr Andersen came up with the best idea, thereby winning the case competition.
“At the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science, we have been very happy to work together with the students from public policy at Aarhus BSS. It has been exciting to read through the thoughts and considerations presented by the students in their reports, and they have provided the agency with several good analysis and policy input for our ongoing work to reduce dropout rates at higher education degree programmes. We particularly want to highlight Publio Consulting for proposing a very specific solution ready for implementation and based on some interesting analyses,” says Niels Christian Beier, deputy director of the Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science.
The winning team, Publio Consulting, consisted of Emil Jøhnke Handberg, Volmer Jahnsen, Nikolaj Corlin and Andreas Sejr Andersen. While working on the case, they noticed that the application process for higher education degree programmes is completely free of any barriers – it takes very few steps to complete the process and it requires no period of reflection from the applicant – and this might be why many students subsequently end up regretting their choice and drop out of their degree programmes.
On this basis, Publio Consulting wondered whether it was possible to change the application process to demand more of the applicant.
"We made an effort to immerse ourselves in the role of consultants without compromising on our academic competencies. Our aim was to prepare a hands-on product which the Ministry of Higher Education and Science could look at and put into use,” says team leader Emil Jøhnke Handberg.
The team’s solution was to add a pop-up window with text, exercises and a video with information on the degree programme in question to the existing application system. The point was to compel applicants to think twice before submitting their application.
“It is a plug-and-play solution which should be relatively easy to incorporate into the existing system. The effect of our solution depends on how much information applicants possess before they are confronted with our pop-up. Hopefully, it can improve students’ choice of degree programmes,” says Emil Jøhnke Handberg, who refers to the solution as low-hanging fruits, although it did take quite a lot of work and analyses to prepare.
“Despite countless meltdowns during the process, it was really exciting to be allowed free rein within the general framework and conditions posed by the Ministry of Higher Education and Science and our lecturers. I believe we got lucky with the composition of our team: We had the opportunity to think big and pursue a different direction in our solution. We knew that our idea would either get a top mark or just pass. But our nerves were pretty steady, so we risked everything and it paid off,” says Andreas Sejr.
