Dual Career advisory service

AU Entrepreneurs' Dual Career advisor can help you:

• Plan your academic path to suit your life as an entrepreneur.
• Find flexible solutions when your studies and your business clash.
• Apply for dispensations, e.g. if you need absence or a tailored study plan.
• Get an overview of the opportunities available to you as a student and entrepreneur at Aarhus University.

Combining student life and entrepreneurship can be challenging – both practically and mentally.

We offer one-to-one guidance to help you:

• Find the right balance between your two career paths.
• Clarify your goals and stay focused.
• Navigate the demands and expectations of both your studies and your business.

We help you gain clarity and create a daily routine that allows room for both.

Starting your own business while studying can be a powerful asset – whether you continue as an entrepreneur or enter the job market.

We help you gain insight into:

• How to combine academic skills with hands-on experience.
• The opportunities that open up when you take ownership of your career during your studies.
• How to use your entrepreneurial experience strategically in your future working life.

Do you need extra flexibility in your studies to focus on your business?

We can support you with:

• Applying for dispensations – for example, changes to your study plan or exams.
• Documenting your entrepreneurial activities, if your startup is positively assessed.
• Understanding the requirements and advising you throughout the application process for dispensation.

We’re here to guide you every step of the way.

If you want to apply for dispensation from your board of studies based on your business, you will need to document that you are working seriously on your entrepreneurial project. That’s where AU Entrepreneurs comes in.

We assess your project and – if the criteria are met – can issue a statement of support to attach to your application.

What do we look at?

When assessing your project, we consider 12 criteria grouped under four main areas:

• Your commitment – how much time and energy you are putting into your business.
• Your startup’s development and potential.
• Your product or solution.
• Market interest and demand.

You don’t need to have a fully established business – but you need to show that you’re working seriously and determined on your project.

How to apply?

If you wish to receive help with your application for dispensation, you must complete and submit an application form. You can download the form here:

Aarhus University would like to help more students to build up relevant business experience and entrepreneurial skills and establish more start-ups during their studies. Aarhus University would also like to help established entrepreneurs by enabling them to pursue university studies in parallel.

It is a great challenge to study to a high level while also launching and managing one’s own business. In this situation, AU Entrepreneurs is an opportunity for those students at Aarhus University who are entrepreneurs alongside their studies.

The new scheme for entrepreneurs is inspired by Aarhus University’s successful ‘dual career concept’, which has allowed elite athletes greater flexibility in their studies for many years now. Aarhus University has had such good experience with this that the concept from 2017 is being expanded with a special track for entrepreneurs.

AU Entrepreneurs will work overall to ensure that more entrepreneurs can pursue a degree programme alongside their entrepreneurship. This will allow more students both to develop their own entrepreneurial skills and to compete their studies. The initiative is thus intended both to cater for the risk that entrepreneurial projects could fail or not develop entirely as planned, and to support dual career development to enable students to make better use of the acquired and research-based knowledge from their studies to develop businesses that require great expertise.

AU Entrepreneurs is open to all entrepreneurs at Aarhus University, and works with all entrepreneurial communities at AU to create synergies with the entrepreneurial support that entrepreneurial communities offer. This means that, overall, Aarhus University can offer targeted entrepreneurial assistance, targeted study advice and targeted study support for different types of entrepreneurs at AU. 

More than just support
AU Entrepreneurs also contributes to new knowledge on how students can best pursue a dual career. We conduct surveys and share insights to help more students benefit from the opportunities that arise at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship.