The story
The university was founded in 1972 and was initially intended as an alternative to the traditional Danish universities which had been the scene of several student uprisings in the late 1960s. The students considered the traditional universities undemocratic and controlled by the professors and wanted more influence as well as more flexible teaching methods.
In the 1970s the university was known for its very liberal education as opposed to the usual lectures provided by the more traditional universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus. The focus was shifted from traditional lectures to group orientated methods and projects rather than traditional exams.
Back in 1972, these educational ideas were both unorthodox and controversial, but the traditional universities in Denmark have now adopted much of the original RU concept themselves, not least the concept of group project work, which is today a recognised academic method. RU can also be said to have brought to Denmark the concepts of interdisciplinarity and less well-defined boundaries between academic fields, which originated in English-language academia.
In 2025 Roskilde University came under pressure for allowing many students and associated family members into the country, triggering a substantial increase in numbers of students from Nepal and Bangadesh. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen stated, that universities were apparently running their own immigration policy, undermining government policies. More stringent access restrictions at universities and policies to ban spouses followed in late 2025, taking effect in 2026. Roskilde University closed its master's degree program "Business Administration and Leadership" as a consequence.
From Wikipedia’s article on Roskilde University, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5