Denmark’s university mentorship program for students with disabilities is facing uncertainty as a new tender process begins. For students like 39-year-old Malene Vestergaard Kisum, this bureaucratic shift threatens a lifeline. She relies on a study mentor to navigate her English degree at Aarhus University while managing autism and ADHD diagnoses. Without this support, she fears becoming just a number in the system.
"I've tried to take an education without a study mentor, and it was really difficult for me," Kisum said. "For me, it has been absolutely decisive in getting support and help to maintain focus." Her mentor, typically another student on the same course, provides crucial guidance through dense reading lists, long nights in the library, and stressful exam periods. This personal assistance is part of Denmark's Special Educational Support scheme, known as SPS.
The Lifeline of Personal Support
The SPS program offers tailored aid to students with diagnosed disabilities or conditions such as ADHD, autism, anxiety, and dyslexia. Support can include special aids, tutoring, or a dedicated study mentor. The personal, one-on-one mentorship component has historically been put out to tender, allowing both external companies and the universities themselves to bid for the contract. In the last round, Aarhus University emerged as the sole victor among Danish institutions.
Anna Bak Maigaard, Vice Director for Education at Aarhus University, champions the university-run model. "We can provide support close to the students' study environment," she explained. "In this way, we can help make it manageable and relevant." The university argues that its proximity to students allows for more effective matching and understanding of academic pressures. This integrated approach is now under threat.
A Policy Shift and its Human Cost
Recently, the Ministry of Higher Education and Science granted universities greater control over most SPS elements. However, it maintained the requirement for the mentorship scheme to be competitively tendered to external vendors. This decision has sparked concern among educational leaders. They warn it could disrupt support for approximately 4,700 students across Denmark who currently use SPS services.
"It is crossing the river to fetch water to get an external company to hire our students to help our students here," Maigaard stated critically. She points to experiences from other educational sectors where external providers have struggled. "The external vendors can have difficulty finding study mentors, and then the scheme simply doesn't get used." The core fear is that a profit-driven contractor, disconnected from campus life, will fail to recruit enough qualified peer mentors. This could leave students waiting for help that never arrives.
The Mechanics of a Vital System
A study mentor's role is multifaceted. They help with practical planning, breaking down syllabi, and developing sustainable study habits. For a student with ADHD, this might mean structuring weekly tasks to combat overwhelm. For a student with autism, it could involve rehearsing social interactions for group projects. The mentor is a bridge between the student's unique needs and the university's standardized demands.
When universities manage the program, they can tap directly into their student networks. They understand the specific culture and workload of each degree program. An external provider, lacking this embedded knowledge, may face significant delays in matching mentors and mentees. They might also struggle to ensure the mentors themselves receive adequate training for supporting neurodiverse peers. The result could be a depersonalized, less effective service.
Expert Analysis: A Step Back for Inclusion?
Education policy analysts see this tender requirement as a contradiction. While Danish policy publicly emphasizes inclusion and student success, outsourcing this sensitive service introduces commercial risk into a welfare-oriented system. "This is a clear case where cost-efficiency metrics clash with qualitative support outcomes," said a Copenhagen-based social policy researcher, who requested anonymity due to ongoing work with ministries. "The mentorship is successful precisely because it's relational and context-specific. Putting it out to tender treats it like a commodity—like supplying paper or laptops."
Experts argue that the move could undermine Denmark's generally strong record on educational accessibility. The Danish welfare model is built on providing comprehensive support to enable citizen participation. Fragmenting that support by introducing a third-party contractor creates a potential accountability gap. Who is responsible if a student fails because a mentor wasn't found? The university, the ministry, or the private company?
Student Anxiety in a Bureaucratic Limbo
For current students like Malene Kisum, the policy debate translates into personal anxiety. The prospect of her mentor being assigned by an off-campus company is unsettling. "The mentor understands my specific challenges because they are in the same environment," she noted. "It's not just generic advice." This understanding is cultivated through shared experience—knowing which professors are clear, which courses are intense, and where to find quiet study spaces.
The uncertainty also affects students who work as mentors. They gain valuable experience and provide a vital service, but their roles may become less secure under a new provider focused on profit margins. The potential for high turnover or poorly matched pairs increases, degrading the quality of support. Students with diagnoses often require consistency; frequent changes in support personnel can be deeply disruptive.
A Look at the Broader Danish Context
This situation reflects a broader tension in Danish society between public welfare and market solutions. In areas like job training and some social services, competitive tendering has been introduced with mixed results. The mentorship program, however, deals with a uniquely vulnerable group at a critical life stage. Interrupting their education has long-term consequences for their integration into the workforce and society—a key goal of Danish social policy.
Municipalities across Denmark, which handle support for youth before university, often lament the transition gap when students move to higher education. A weakened university mentorship scheme would widen that gap. Social centers in cities like Copenhagen and Aarhus stress the importance of continuous support systems for young adults with disabilities to achieve independence.
What Happens Next?
The tender process will unfold over the coming months. Universities, including Aarhus, are preparing their bids, hoping to retain control. They are armed with data showing higher satisfaction and engagement rates from their internally managed programs. External companies will likely argue they can deliver the service more cheaply. The ministry will have to weigh cost against educational outcomes and student wellbeing.
For the 4,700 students depending on SPS, the wait is fraught. They need stability to manage their studies, not bureaucratic upheaval. Malene Kisum’s fear of becoming "just a number" is a potent warning. It highlights the human cost when essential support systems are treated as contractual line items rather than integral parts of an inclusive education. The question for Danish policymakers is clear: will they protect a model that works, or will they let the market decide the fate of thousands of students striving for a degree?