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  • Seppo Sainio
    Chair, The Union for University Teachers and Researchers in Finland(YLL)
     

    Editorial 3.10.2014

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    The waffling over the core funding of the Universities was continued in the Government's budget negotiations in August. This time, it was decided that Universities are to be capitalized in relationship to what they have obtained as private donations. In addition, the influence of the halving of the index increment will be compensated on a one-off basis. Instead of a predictable and stable financing, we have had to grow accustomed to reading complex lines of words concerning various financing manoeuvres.

    The cuts by the Government on education during this term have been nearly two billion euros. Since the year 2010, Universities are 200 million euros short of what they should have received. In a poor economic situation, the Government has been forced to make value choices. And so it has done: the educational brand of Finland has been neglected without qualms.

    The personnel cuts add up to 350 employees within one year. Leaving the posts in teaching and research without an incumbent is especially alarming, and it has been going on for years already. The reason for this phenomenon is not strategic choices, but the lack of resources. Employer-employee negotiations are not required when posts are left without an incumbent, although the consequences of this are bound to have an effect on education and research.

    I wonder if we will end up in a situation, where the current teaching and supervising numbers settle themselves into the so-called zero level, when the the economy begins to recover at some point? It is crucial to observe that we are at the moment functioning on gravely undersized resources. The insufficient funding allocated for the unraveling of the gridlock of applicants only dots the i's and crosses the t's.

    The resources will remain quite limited in the near future, too. Teaching cannot be made any more efficient by reducing contact hours per study point, not without significant reductions to the content matter in the study plans. At this point, we encounter the demands of working life concerning levels of competence. What is more, interaction with the teacher is considered an important indicator of the quality of teaching in the student feedback. Enforcing the Universities into mutual competition does not increase core funding, and neither does the allocation of working hours or any other kind of monitoring. So, what to do?

    It is common knowledge in Universities that the personnel does not always have time to concentrate on their basic duties. Continuous development, change and bureaucracy burns off everybody's personal resources. An organization that consideres itself to be progressive, should every now and then stop and direct a critical gaze towards its own operational culture. We have to start turning essential issues into priorities.

    Teaching and research personnel value for instance functional administration and competent procurement. A well-functioning administration operates primarily to diminish the amount of bureaucracy. Making systems procurements in a manner based genuinely on the needs of the users also belongs to the category of good administration. When, for instance, the tools for planning teaching do not enable the construction of unreasonably heavy study periods, and when the compiling of a the travel invoice does not instigate the feeling of cluelessness, we are beginning to save time. Action towards the spreading of the reporting industry is already late. It is equally important that the administration has time to learn to understand teaching and research duties. This would enable our competent administration to support this kind of work better and to foreground the diminishing of bureaucracy as its strategic primary aim.

    The personnel of one Department was befuddled, because unlike in other Departments, no allocation of working hours was demanded of them. When the administrator of the Department was approached with this issue, the answer was that the allocation has to be done, but the administration does it on behalf of the teaching and research personnel. Under these kinds of circumstances, the starting points for University work are good.

    Seppo sainio
    Chair, The Union for University Teachers and Researchers in Finland (YLL)

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