Finland's Higher Education Sector Set for an Extreme Makeover. (August 15, 2009)

Finland's oldest university, the University of Helsinki, was founded in 1640, and its newest, the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, began in 1979. In all Wikipedia lists Finland (population 5.25 million) as supporting 21 universities.

Ian Dobson, honorary research fellow in the Centre for Population and Urban Research and director of the Educational Policy Institute (Australasia) at Monash University, has recently returned from Finland where he has been studying the Finnish university system and written a number articles for University World News^{1, 2,} since November of last year, the most recent of which (June 21, 2009) notes: "The Finnish parliament has voted for the most radical set of reforms of the nation's university system in several decades. Despite a couple of glitches on the way to the parliament, the new act was passed by 168 votes to 16, with the only party-wide opposition coming from Vasemmistoliitto, the Left Alliance."

Among the reforms, it was initially proposed that "at least 50% of university board members [were] to be appointed from outside the universities". However, when it was agreed that that would go against the constitution and would affect academic autonomy (mandated by Finland's constitution), the legislation called for universities to appoint at least 40% of board members from outside.

Dr Dobson also lists three additional major reforms which are scheduled to come into force on January 1, 2010.

• As is the norm in many European systems, Finnish rectors have been elected by the professors, other staff and students. In future, the board will appoint the rector who will be answerable to that board. The appointee will not need to be a professor of the university, a requirement at present.
  

• [U]niversities' legal status will change: they will become independent legal entities rather than continuing to be 'accounting units' within the government bureaucracy. University staff will cease to be 'civil servants' and some have also seen this change as an attack on academic freedom.
  

• [U]niversities will have two-thirds ownership of companies that own university buildings and the government will be the minority shareholder. At present, universities rent buildings from a government-owned company so this move should provide universities with an asset they can use as leverage for loans and so forth.

According to Dr Dobson, currently nearly 90% of university funding is derived from the state ("so-called 'budget funding' represents about 65% of their total incomes. Finns describe the other 35% as 'external funding', but in fact, nearly 24% also comes from the government.")

In reality what appears to be the intent of the Finnish government is to reduce eventually the universities' drain on public funding comparable to the sort of reduction that has been occurring in Australia over the past several decades.

However, Dr Dobson points out that currently: "There is no intention to introduce tuition fees for domestic students and there is only limited scope for charging fees to students from outside the EU/EEA," and there is little likelihood of substantial funds being raised through philanthropic donations, while contracted research may boost funding it isn't expected to contribute significantly in the short term. 

He sums up the matter: "It remains to be seen whether in future the government starts offering a larger proportion of tightly earmarked funding on the basis of 'competition' between universities [and] government can then continue to exert control by demanding detailed 'accountability' for the use of such competitively-obtained funds. This has certainly been the experience in other 'freed-up' university sectors such as Australia, for example."