More Productive Bodies Faster! Human Capital and Anti-Intellectualism in Danish University Reform

This article examines the current Danish reform of master's programmes as a case of contested marketization in higher education. While the reform aims to produce “labour-market-relevant” graduates by shortening degrees, introducing corporate programmes, and reducing enrolment, it reveals a fundamental tension between two competing economic logics: a neoliberal conception of students as human capital and a conventional view of labour as quantifiable work time. The emphasis on the latter by the Danish coalition government, particularly the Social Democrats, parallels their glorification of vocational work and disdain for intellectualism. Drawing on policy documents and public debate, the article shows how these logics coexist uneasily within the reform, combining aspirations to optimize students' individual investment decisions with efforts to increase the aggregate labour supply. The article further analyses the critiques the reform has generated. While traditional critiques emphasize the erosion of universities' role in cultivating democratic citizens, a “market critique” emerging from economic actors highlights the reform's failure on its own terms. This critique exposes the limits of centralized planning in engineering labour-market outcomes and points to unintended consequences. Building on this analysis, the article develops the concept of “impure resistance” to describe forms of critique that operate within, rather than outside, market rationalities. It argues that such internal critiques can open new avenues for coalition-building in contexts where democratic arguments struggle to resonate, while also underscoring their limitations. The article concludes that effective resistance to marketization must mobilize its internal contradictions rather than oppose it from a single normative standpoint.