Leader
Universities or
Finland in Crisis?
Universities have been going through times that are
characterized by disbelief, despair and uncomfortable
truth. A time of disbelief came in the spring,
when the "S's" of the government came out to
speak in public and sneered about their actions directed
at universities, accompanied with awkward
jokes. I remember that when I heard about this, I was standing with
a phone on my ear and looking at the light well below me and at the
students and teachers moving around in there. I could not believe
what I had heard and said, in one fell swoop, that we need to react to
this. I was not so much thinking about myself, but about all the colleagues
for whom I had been authorized to act. How was it possible
that they could be insulted so? How was it possible that their work
and commitment was publicly questioned? Disbelief is the word that
best describes my feeling.
Reality did not quite become evident at first, and hope was predominant
at universities. The chairmen who had formed the government
had, after all, made promises before the election that there would be
no education cuts. Many people probably believed this until the plans
were announced in their entirety. The budget figures were harsh to
read. University funding was intervened on with unprecedentedly
large cuts. Despair started to take hold of the university community.
There was also confusion at universities. The politicians' perspective
towards research and education seemed very strange. University
budget funding and also funding channelled through Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation, towards R&D&I
activities were seen straightforwardly and simply as
an item of expenditure. A perspective that sees funding
research and education as an investment for the
future received no response from the government,
and they also did not issue any concrete definitions
of research policy. We were in a new and unfamiliar
situation.
Many people wondered where the visions of Finland
as the most educated nation of the world had
disappeared. Where did the belief in investing in research
and education go? A recent historical point of
comparison can be found in the recession of the early
1990s. At the time, the state government started to
invest heavily in research and a large portion of the
additional funding was channelled through Tekes.
In the midst of the deepest recession, Tekes funding
was increased by almost about a third. In 1993, Tekes
made a record number of new funding decisions: 1908,
which was 700 more than in the previous year (Tekes
25 years). This was not only about concretely encouraging
many companies that were striving to move forward,
but also a strong societal message: better times
are ahead, and they are certainly within reach.
Later in the 1990s, more investments were made
in research. In 1997, an unusually large rate increase
was implemented: the real value of the state research
funding rose by no less than 23 per cent from the previous
year. A major part of the addition was channelled
through Tekes.
These times are now gone. These times were also
characterized by the slow growth of the economy and
the technology companies' rise to the top level, with
Nokia in the lead. It is time for the uncomfortable truth.
The Finnish government has decided to respond
to the challenges of the present day with unprecedented
cuts to both the direct budget funding of the
universities and to the competitive funding channelled
through Tekes. The decision makers have lost
their faith in expertise.
All that is left are the cooperation negotiations, and
their size and extent no longer came as a surprise. In
the metropolitan area, the University of Helsinki and
Aalto University together are trying to cut over 1500
people. Proportionally similar cuts are being planned
in different areas of Finland. Even those universities
that are not embarking on the cooperation negotiations
process this year will face great budgetary challenges
in the future.
The uncomfortable truth will slowly turn into a desperate
fight for survival.
Kaarle Hämeri
Chair, The Finnish Union of University Professors
- Painetussa lehdessä sivu 44
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