New organisation of Academic departments approved

The change will take effect from 1 August 2026. This mainly involves continuing with the current departmental structure.

The consultation process revealed strong support within the organisation for the eight-department option. All seven current academic departments, Parat (the union), and administrative section leaders support the eight-department model. However, the Student Committee argued for four departments.

Agenda Kaupang recommended that NMH have fewer, larger academic departments, but neither the working group nor the consultation responses supported this. Both the working group and several consultation responses noted that larger sections would require subdivisions, such as subject councils and middle managers

The working group further writes: “It is important that the departments and their responsibilities are not so large that they cannot be managed effectively while department heads still have time to handle both teaching and R&D tasks. If the role of department leader becomes a full-time job, it will be difficult to recruit internally.”

The working group will continue to work on collaboration between department heads and programme coordinators, including questions about the number of programme coordinators, the structure of programme committees, and related matters. Consultation respondents were also invited to provide input on these matters, and this feedback will be followed up on in a new report, that also will be sent to feedback before it will be presented at the board meeting in June.

The organisation of R&D activities is also scheduled to be addressed at the June board meeting.

The working group has highlighted the need to review and adjust department affiliations for certain academic specialities, which often consist of only one or two staff members.

Although the board determines the division of departments, it has never been involved in assigning specific positions to sections, such as whether an associate professor in harpsichord should belong to the Piano, Accompaniment, Guitar, and Accordion department or the Conducting, Singing, and Church Music departments, to name a relevant example.

This, along with whether department names should be changed, has been delegated to the rectorate and will be decided during the spring.

Under the current arrangement, all academic staff, including research fellows, are affiliated with an academic department, with the department head as their immediate superior.

The argument for changing this is that most personnel matters concerning research fellows are tied to the progress of their research projects and are therefore as much academic as personnel-related. These matters are usually handled collectively and, in most cases, not by the department head.

The working group's suggested change is that research fellows should remain connected to academic environments through the sections, but the formal personnel responsibility should be transferred to the leaders of the doctoral programmes (DRU and KUST), supported by both the R&D and personnel administrations. This largely aligns with the current practice. The board has tasked the principal and director with establishing a new arrangement.

After the consultation on the division of academic departments, negotiations between the employer and the employee organisations took place on 23 February. During the meeting, it was agreed that “The director will submit a proposal to the board for the future organisation with eight academic departments in line with Model Five in the consultation document.”