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UNIVERSITY

German IT students play XXL Tetris on university building

Four IT students in the north German city of Kiel planned the installation of tens of thousands of lights at a university building and now use them to play classic video games Tetris and Breakout.

German IT students play XXL Tetris on university building
Photo: DPA

The group at the Christian-Albrechts university in the northern city of Kiel have effectively turned the facade of a university office building into a 1,700-inch flat screen, using it to play historic gaming classics Tetris and Breakout.

“To play this game in this format is something really special,” said team member Merlin Kötzing

Video of the project #lighthouse; Source: YouTube

In the course of their “Project Lighthouse” Jonas Lutz (Business IT), Andreas Boysen, Merlin Kötzing and Chris Kulessa (IT) planned the installation of a total of 56,448 LEDs to light up each of the 392 windows on the front of the building.

Each LED contains a custom-made chip the size of a fingernail.

The four young men even reprogrammed the Tetris game, originally invented by Russian programmer Alexei Pajitnov in 1980, to fit their purpose. They now move the virtual building blocks on the wall using a laptop.

“We put approximately 5,000 hours of work into this,” said 23-year-old project manager Jonas Lutz.

Though replicated in cities such as Philadelphia and Boston, the idea of building-scale LED art is a product of German ingenuity, popularized by Berlin project Blinkenlights in 2001.

The word Blinkenlights itself comes from a pidgin German joke by US computer programmers in the years after the Second World War.

Four nerds with a dream

After Lutz lacked sufficient funds during his first attempt to start the project, the university press office got wind of his idea  – and immediately started looking for sponsors, even contributing their own money to the €30,000 endeavor.

During the 2015 referenda on Hamburg and Kiel's applications for the summer Olympics in 2024, the students showed off their project for the first time, orchestrating a count down.

By now, “the star of the night” attracts many visitors to watch the lights, take selfies – and play over-sized Tetris. In the future, the students want to provide extra game pads for those itching to move around the virtual blocks.

Picture of the game Breakout; Photo: i.ytimg.com

Gaming in the name of science

But the undertaking is not all fun and games, said Lutz. “This is not just playing around, we can do proper research with with this thing.”

“At the moment, we're planning on a project concerning Li Fi [a system to use rapidly flashing lights rather than radio signals to transmit data],” university press officer Jan Winters told The Local.

“It's quite special because usually projects are initiated by the teaching body and are carried out by students. This time it's the other way around.”

Since the running costs are low, the LEDs may be blinking on for a while. “The costs for an hour of Tetris add up to only a few cents,” explained Lutz.

And the university staff are not scared of complaints either.

“It's not like we have a constitutional right to darkness in this country,” says Jan Winters.

by Max Bringmann

SEE ALSO: 7 German startups creating buzz at South by Southwest

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EDUCATION

English-language programmes at Danish universities face cuts

Denmark's government has agreed on a plan to significantly reduce the number of courses offered in English in the country's universities.

English-language programmes at Danish universities face cuts
Life sciences faculty hold an open house at Copenhagen University. The university is now expected to reduce admissions as part of a plan to decentralise higher education in Denmark. Photo: Thomas Lekfeldt / Ritzau Scanpix

At the end of June, the plan aims to reduce the number of English-language higher education programmes while also expanding educational opportunities outside of Denmark’s major cities.

The exact number of courses to be cut – and where they will be cut – depends on the future employment of graduates.

Cuts to English-language programmes

The reduction of English-language programmes at institutions of higher education is rooted in an effort to reduce rising costs of state educational grants (SU) in Denmark. Despite attempts to reduce SU expenses, the cost is expected to rise to 570 million kroner by 2025, far above the cap of 449 million kroner set in 2013. 

There are a number of cases in which non-Danish citizens are entitled to SU, from moving to Denmark with one’s parents, marrying a Danish citizen, residing in Denmark for more than 5 years, status as a worker in Denmark, and more.

The reduction is targeted at English-language programmes where few English-speaking students find employment in Denmark after graduation, according to Denmark’s Ministry of Education and Research. 

Among the targeted programmes are business academies and professional bachelor programmes, where 72 percent of students are English-speaking and only 21 percent find work in Denmark after completing their education. 

However, programmes where higher proportions of English students enter the Danish workforce, and those that have a unique significance on the regional labour market, will be exempt from the reduction. This amounts to 650 education institutions around the country. 

In 2016, students demonstrated against cuts in SU. Photo: Emil Hougaard / Ritzau Scanpix

The agreement also establishes a financial incentive for institutions that graduate English-speaking students who remain to work in Denmark.

According to a June 10 analysis from consulting firm Deloitte, EU students who receive higher education in Denmark contribute an average of nearly 650,000 kroner to Denmark’s public coffers over a lifetime. 

However, the report notes, a student’s positive or negative contribution depends on how long they stay in Denmark. Although students who leave Denmark shortly after graduating constitute a cost to the Danish state, the analysis found that the contribution of students who stay in Denmark to work offsets the cost of those who leave.

The analysis expressed concern that reducing opportunities for English-language higher education could “have a number of unintended negative consequences,” including deterring students who might stay in Denmark to work from moving in the first place. There’s also the risk that it will become more difficult to recruit foreign researchers to Danish universities, which could impact education quality, the analysis claims.

The UCN professional school in Thisted is expected to open one new training program as a result of the decentralisation plan. Photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

Decentralisation of Danish education

The plan to decentralise higher education in Denmark not only expands educational opportunities outside of Denmark’s major cities, but it also aims to reduce enrollment in higher education within major cities by 10 percent by 2030 (but not more than 20 percent).

For example, a law programme will be established in Esbjerg, a medical programme in Køge and a veterinary programme in Foulum.

Minister of Education and Research Ane Halsboe-Jørgensen said the goal was to offer students educational opportunities regardless of where they live within Denmark and strengthen the economy outside of major cities. 

However, the Danish Chamber of Commerce, Dansk Erhverv, expressed concern that the decentralisation plan doesn’t factor in labour demands within Denmark’s major cities.

Mads Eriksen, head of education and research policy at Dansk Erhverv, said it was “unwise” for programmes to reduce acceptance rates to in-demand fields in that particular city. 

“They are trying to solve a problem with labour in the countryside, but at the same time they are creating labour problems in the cities,” Eriksen said. “The English-language programme cuts are far more aligned with the demands of the labour market.”

Denmark has utilised unemployment-based admission for higher education since 2015. Programmes whose graduates experience unemployment consistently 2 percent higher than average are subject to a 30 percent admission cut.

Eriksen thinks it shouldn’t be a matter of reducing admissions across several universities by

“For example, we have five philosophy education programmes in Denmark, each of which have high unemployment rates among graduates,” Eriksen said, referencing a recent Dansk Erhverv analysis

He would prefer to see resources concentrated into making a couple of those programmes the best they can be and closing the rest, versus reducing admissions in all five programmes. “We have to be ready to close programmes that continue to have high unemployment, not just reduce them.”

In 2018, the University of Southern Denmark closed one English-language program and converted two from English to Danish. Photo: Tim Kildeborg Jensen / Ritzau Scanpix

Opposite impacts on provincial institutions

Gitte Sommer Harrits, vice chancellor at VIA University College, shared concern that although the decentralised education aspect of the plan aims to increase the number of students at provincial universities, the reduction of English-language programmes is likely to have the opposite effect.

A report from the organisation Akademikerne in early June found that international students have played a significant role filling educational institutions outside of Danish cities. Nine of the 10 educational institutions with the largest proportion of English-speaking students are outside the country’s largest cities. 

The University of Southern Denmark in Sønderborg has the highest proportion of international students; 40 percent of its 628 students are not affiliated with Denmark or other Nordic countries. 

While significantly larger with nearly 37,000 students, Copenhagen University has 5.2 percent international students.

Already in 2018, the University of Southern Denmark closed one English-language programme and converted two others from English to Danish after the Danish government ordered universities to reduce the number of international students.

Harrits said she found the possible closure of English-language programmes drawing international students to provincial areas to be puzzling when paired with the intention to decentralise education.

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