The hills are alive with the sound of mergers

The skies over ITU
These days, Danish universities are in a high state of alert (or ’emergency’ in some cases). The government has proposed drastic structural reforms in the form of mergers between various institutions (we have 13 university level institutions of various sizes. Or is it 14? Anyway…).

Particuarly interesting is the suggestion that the IT University of Copenhagen (us!; 1500 students) be subsumed under the vastly larger University of Copenhagen (33.000 students).
Problem (for merger fans) is that the ITU resists these plans, now backed by the largest opposition party and IT labour organizations.

In a discussion thread at IT news outlet Computerworld.dk, one participant makes a statement which probably causes brief episodes of smugness around the house:

I’m having a hard time seeing the problem – after having been a student in both places I feel that it would be greatly beneficient for the University of Copenhagen to be subsumed under the IT University of Copenhagen.

We’ll see what happens…

Update: Lisbeth also comments

Like Hell I lost, I was trying to feed the mushroom creatures!

Have you noticed that sometimes during video game play, players try to redefine the goals?
This can happen verbally or it can happen through actions as when a player starts shooting his team-mates for the heck of it.

Often, I think, it is related to certain future defeat. The losing player tries to redefine the goals to signal that he wasn’t really playing that game after all. When he loses, he will not really have lost.

Do you agree? Do you recognize the phenonenon?

Anyway, I wrote a brief section for my dissertation on the topic. Continue reading Like Hell I lost, I was trying to feed the mushroom creatures!