Dramatic dropout rates in the Greenlandic educational system calls for action
Ilisimatusarfik in Nuuk, the only university in Greenland (Press photo by Toke Brødsgaard)
GREENLAND: Education is considered the key for Greenland to establish itself as a well functioning Nordic country. More Greenlanders than ever now choose the educational path, but unfortunately for Greenland, the dropout rate follows the same path. One of two decides to leave their studies, and the minister has new called for action and evaluation, while the university tries to put pressure on the other institutions of the system.
Less then a week after Malik Olsen* in September 2012 had moved to Nuuk he was on a plane back home to Aasiaat in western Greenland again. This was the first time he had ever lived in the capital, but he didn’t even get to unpack his bags in the dorm he had been assigned through his studies, before he made a discovery that changed his opinion towards the reason he came here.
In 2011 he had a talk with the student councillor in his Gymnasium, equivalent to high school, about his education future. She asked him what he wanted to do with his life. He didn’t know, “but it had to be something with economy”. The student councillor told him to get a university degree in social sciences at Ilisimatusarfik in Nuuk, the only university in Greenland. Suikkaq went with it, got accepted and in September 2012 he moved to Nuuk to start his studies. But in the first week he learnt something that neither he or the student councillor of his Gymnasium had thought about when the decision was made.
“We were not going to be taught economy until our third semester. The first two semesters would mostly be about politics, and I hate politics. I simply don’t get politics so I didn’t want to stay”, says Malik today.
He went straight to the university student councillor, informed her about his decision to leave the university, and to discuss where to go from here. She suggested the business school.
“I didn’t even know that existed. But I thought I would give it a go, and if it turned out bad, I could always choose to become a teacher”, says Malik, who has several teachers in his family – amongst those his own dad.
18 national costumes stayed in the wardrobe
Dropping out of the educational system in Greenland is not something unique. In February 2014 three students in language, literature and media at Ilisimatusarfik in Nuuk, could take on the ceremony and receive their diplomas for having finished their bachelor’s degree of three years. All wearing the national costume of Greenland covered with seal skin and pearls and used for special occasions when there is something to celebrate. The national day. Weddings. Graduation ceremonies. Obviously a great success for the three, yet undeniable less of a success for the society of Greenland. Back in 2011 when these three students started studying they had a total of 21 people in their class room. A dropout rate of 81 percent is unheard of – even for Greenlandic standards – but it stands as one of the clearest examples of a main flaw of the educational system in the autonomous island.
Only half of those who enrol in any kind of education in Greenland have, for as long as Greenland Statistics have been measuring, not finished their studies. Every year the number of people who drop out is higher or almost similar to the one of the number of people that finished their studies and according to the Department of Education, Culture, Research and Church, the completion rate of 2014 were at a paltry 48,3 percent. For comparison, Denmark has an 80 percent completion rate for gymnasiums, though a third of all students of higher education abandons their studies, yet for most it’s only to begin another one shortly after.
Source: Greenland Statistial Bank
Every year national research is being done to shed a light on the issues Greenland faces, and associate professor Merete Watt Boolsen from the university of Copenhagen in Denmark used to contribute to this. She still follows Greenland closely and has educational research of Greenland as one of her specialization fields. She points to the transitions between the different educations as highly important when studies have found the the educational career for a young person leaving elementary school in 2010 shows a probability of continued education being less than 50 percent.
“If the young Greenlander embarks upon an educational career after elementary education, he or she is relatively more likely to drop-out of the system and relatively less likely to compete the education”, says Merete Watt Boolsen.
Dropout rate surpasses graduation rate
However, more students have entered the educational system over time, so that Greenland in 2014 had 1000 more active than 10 years before. However, as more students graduate, more also drop out.
Source: Greenland Statistial Bank
“From the perspective of the education reforms it is highly problematic that the completion figures are smaller than the dropout figures during the whole period under observation. Since the relationship between the individual factors (completion and drop-out) is relatively stable during the period under observation, it is concluded that the education sector has increased without becoming more ‘efficient’, says Merete Watt Boolsen.
Education in Greenland is almost entirely centred in the south of the country with the capital Nuuk as the big and most important city. This means that a lot of children has to travel great distances in order to start study on upper secondary level. Some of Merete Watt Boolsen studies of student counsellors show, that the Greenlandic students have trouble with “life around being a student” compared to the ordinary Danish student’ study-life. The reason is that so many factors are changed for the Greenlandic student at the same time, because of the tradition, the geography, the cultural aspects and the linguistic aspects are so different.
“Some Greenlandic students leave their parents to go to school far away. This creates problems – and in some areas they have experimented – successfully with arrangements about how to get the students up in the mornings, how to balance their budgets so that there will be money for food also during the last week of the month, and so on”, Merete Watt Boolsen says.
Rector of Ilisimatusarfik, Tine Pars (Press photo: Jørgen Chemnitz)
University raises bar to put pressure on other institutions
The high dropout rate is visible from the bottom and to the top of the educational system in Greenland. In 2011 Ilisimatusarfik took in 164 students and today – five years after – 35 percent has graduated, 48 percent has dropped out and 16 percent of then are still active, and this is not good news for the Rector of Ilisimatusarfik, Tine Pars, who was hoping to see a movement in the efficiency of the university.
“Unfortunately it seems that things remain the same. Way too many falls out”, says Tine Pars.
The university already offers additional courses in different languages and in writing academically, but in order to bring down the high dropout rate Tine Pars and the university has now decided to raise the requirements on four of the ten studies that can be chosen at Ilisimatusarfik: teaching, nursing, social working and ‘language, literature and media’.
Hereby the university chooses another way then the Gymnasiums that has lowered the grade requirement to a grade average of 1 on a scale from -3 to 12.“We have too many students who are not ready for university, whose grades from the gymnasium does not match their qualification. I am afraid that it is too easy for many to slip through the system and hopefully these requirements will have an effect downwards in the system”, she says.
Socially acceptable to skip work and studies
Minister of Education, Nivi Olsen from the Democrats, has called for new attention to the topic. In May she decided that the university needs an evaluation in order to do something about the high dropout rate calling it a “societal problem”
“We need to have this discussion now, and a change attitude and more demands is needed”, said the minister in that regard.
This has been received positively by the student organisation Ili Ili. Early June they appointed Kuluk R. Lyberth as new chairman and he has promised to let his main focus be more focus on the individual. He also sees the quality of education and the distances as main factors of why so many drops out of the system, but the solution is to be find somewhere else, he believes.
“There is still a lack of information and a very laid back attitude towards being a student. The students don’t know what their studies actually will consist of, so they decide just to try, if it works out for them, and in those cases it often doesn’t work. They have zero ambitions of achieving something and therefore they are not ready to work for it”, he says.
The mentality can best be summed up by comparing to the attitude towards sailing. When the rain deer season starts in august, the weather is perfect for going for a sail.
“And then it’s socially acceptable to skip work or studies and go sailing instead. I think this is now slowly changing in Nuuk, but in the rest of the coast this is still the case”, says Kuluk R. Lyberth.
Education is getting more popular
Within recent years’ education has gotten a lot more attention in Greenland, more people choose to get an education, and more programs is being offered in the institutions. Ilisimatusafik has created a business administration diploma program and it is working on getting a Bachelor of Science. The Institute of Nature, Pinngortitaleriffik, is currently working with Aarhus University and University of Manotoba in Canada to start an interdisciplinary graduate program in Nuuk with focus on science.
Also the politicians aim to raise the educational level of the population, and this is of high importance for Greenland in order to keep up with the rest of the Nordic countries. So says Rasmus Gjedssø Bertelsen, professor at University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway. He calls for a focus on human capital, the quality of the educational level for the citizens.
Source: Greenland Statistial Bank
“I often hear the argument that because Greenland is such a small society they will never be able to fill out all the position themselves. That’s rubbish. A relevant comparison is the Faroe Islands and their society is even smaller than the one of Greenland, but they have a strong human capital and therefore they are largely self sufficient. And to get there, education is key”, he says.
“It would mean a lot for their welfare, health care system and education sector. The more education, the better a job can you get, and right now the Greenlandic people is missing out on so many good jobs, because they hire from abroad”, says Rasmus G. Bertelsen.
Where to go from here?
When qualified work force is hired from abroad, it’s most often Danes who gets the jobs and the history of Denmark and the colonial past and current ties with Greenland in the Danish Realm has influenced the way education is being thought out. The system is very like the one of Denmark with nine years of mandatory school, followed by different levels of education that you can choose to take. Even though Greenland has full control over their educational system, it’s still very much shaped by Danish way of thinking. Rasmus G. Bertelsen points to the importance of Greenlanders seeking education abroad and returning as very important for the future of Greenland.
“My advice for Greenland would be to look more toward American undergraduate degrees then to Denmark and have the university focus on high quality bachelor degrees, which prepare Greenlanders well for Masters and PhD-education outside Greenland. These bachelor degrees also should be linked to needs for jobs in Greenland so young Greenlanders can see the prospect in continuing their studies. Today you have a large group of people with only informal competences”, he says.
According to professor Merete Watt Boolsen, Greenland would benefit from being able to think more independent then they do now.
“In so many ways it is a clear mistake to copy the Danish rules, regulations and other ‘set-up’ in the Greenlandic context. The culture is different, the linguistic situation is different, and we represent and ex-colonial figure, and the latter creates hesitation – if not worse”, she says.
Kuluk R. Lyberth, the new chair man of the student organisation Ili Ili remains positive for the future of Greenland and its students. He agrees that not everything should be following the Danish model, and urges his fellow students to use the knowledge they get in Greenland.
“We have a new generation where more and more young people dares to step forward through especially social media, and engage in politics and the future of the country. We should encourage them to go abroad but at the same time make it attractive for them to return again”, he says.
Education is a necessity today
Malik Olsen sometimes blames his Gymnasium student councillor for advising him to go to the university and study social science based on his interest in economy, but he also blames himself.
“I probably should have looked more into the studies before I started, but it was hard to find relevant information. I even send them an e-mail and asked how best to prepare for the studies, and they replied that I shouldn’t think about that but that it would work all out when I got to Nuuk”, he says.
For him, the high dropout rate of his country mostly has to do with general laziness amongst his fellow students, and it bothered him that he had to leave the university, because he describes himself as a kind of person that does not like to start something without finishing it.
“Generally I has always been my thought, that dropping out of school would be embarrassing for me as a person. But I guess there is such a thing as simply making wrong decisions, he says.
Moving on to studying in the business school turned out to be a good decision for Suikkaq. He has now finished two years of studies, and he has been hired by by TELE Greenland, the main telecommunication and postal provider in Greenland, as a junior controller, and he is now preparing for the second part of his studies – the diploma program with a specialism in accounting.
The idea of being a teacher if everything fails has been put to the grave, and he now dreams of one day being able to start his own business or maybe move to Denmark with his girlfriend and their child their two-year old child.
“I want to get as high up in the business community as possible. For me education is a necessity, and the more you have, the higher you go in life, he says.
*Malik Olsen is a fictional name.
