Vision for Higher Education and Research: Many objectives – what can we afford?

Text terhi hautamäki images Outi Kainiemi

english translation Marko saajanaho

“Bildung as a way forward for Finland”, says the title of the vision published this June.

The Ministry of Education and Culture’s Vision for Higher Education and Research takes aim towards the 2040s, which are in fact not very far away. Increasing the level of education emerges as the vision’s core concept. The percentage of young highly educated people is to be increased to 60 percent.

That is a lofty goal. Currently, we are sitting below 40 percent, and the 50 percent goal of the previous 2030 vision seems unlikely to be realised.

The vision also includes a promise of a free higher education degree and quality higher education and research. It contains a wide array of recommended measures whose practical effects will be seen in the future. The plan for realising the vision will be drawn up later.

What do these goals look like from the university perspective?

“Cannot afford to lose even one young person”

University of Vaasa rector Minna Martikainen finds increasing the level of education the most essential goal of the vision. After the early 2030s, exceptionally small cohorts will come of higher education age. Simply increasing the percentage will not help if the absolute number of experts falls off.

“We have to train international students with purpose, integrate them into society, attract labour immigration, and educate Finnish young people to the maximum. That is how we will have a growing and healthy Finland in 2040.”

“The system is more exclusive than attractive. We cannot afford to lose even one young person from the few we have.”

According to Martikainen, admission to higher education should be made smoother. Currently, young people stay behind to improve their matriculation exam grades and apply over and over again.

“The system is more exclusive than attractive. We cannot afford to lose even one young person from the few we have.”

Martikainen takes a practical view to education quality – the most important metric is students finding employment. Competence requirements should be predicted even more effectively.

“We also have continuous discussions with local businesses about what is needed. We develop our own activities towards that.”

To maintain and improve research quality, higher education institutions are forced to apply more and more external research funding. According to Martikainen, the situation is demanding but inevitable. For example, there is plenty more European research funding to apply for and obtain.

“When we pay our share to the EU coffers, we should try to get back as much as possible. If we apply for less and receive less than our European competition, we fund scientific progress in other countries.”

What is the ratio between students and teachers?

University Teacher Tommi Kokkonen works at the University of Turku’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. He notes that quality is mentioned in the vision but suggested actions are few and far between.

“It seems even the Ministry of Education and Culture themselves do not recognise the structural factors under their power that could improve the quality of higher education.”

According to Kokkonen, the ways the funding model hinders improving quality are ignored. Opportunities for external funding depend on the field. The model does not encourage cooperation between higher education institutions, but competition. Shorter graduation times as a metric for allocating funding is more likely to encourage lowering the bar despite teachers’ strong desire to keep goals at a high level.

Kokkonen has studied the teaching and learning of natural sciences. Quality teaching is in line with the goals and effectively structured. It requires mastery of the content and pedagogic competence from the teacher. The student can clearly identify a consistent thread throughout the degree.

Quality also requires enough teachers in relation to the number of students. That ratio gets more and more strained as the number of students grows.

“If there is a large teaching workload, you have less time to develop your teaching or do research work.”

Quality can also be improved by offering more pedagogical training to teachers. Natural science fields are concerned about how gymnasiums prepare students for their studies. Preparatory and support courses have been considered. These also require resources.

“There is no mention of stronger core funding in the vision despite the fact it was mentioned by university stakeholders during the prep process.”

Kokkonen praises the vision for considering the importance of the education chain to improve admission opportunities – gymnasium, vocational education, and the capabilities of immigrants. One of the recommendations is to develop vocational education content and guidance towards higher education. This is important because vocational qualification have been paring down general studies, for example, making it more difficult to transition to higher education.

What becomes of the promise of free education?

Economist Vesa Vihriälä considers the vision’s notions on sivistys (translated as Bildung in the English abstract), increased research and development investments, and the increased higher education rate to be important.

But then, there is the promise of free education. The vision promises quality education despite no increased funding in sight. Vihreälä finds it hard to reconcile fully free-of-charge education with the goal of 60 percent of young people with higher education. However, he would not opt for particularly high fees.

“This is the most vulnerable part of the vision. The Ministry of Education has given me the notion that the current funding is not even sufficient to reach the 50 percent goal.”

According to the vision, the system will see bold reinvention based on the current strengths. This has raised questions regarding the future of the current dual model, i.e., the division of work between universities and universities of applied science. Vihriälä says administrative cooperation benefits universities and universities of applied science in the same area but would keep their roles and degrees separate.

”The Ministry of Education has given me the notion that the current funding is not even sufficient to reach the 50 percent goal.”

The vision talks about meeting the needs of society. Vihriälä says reacting to demand is important, although it is hard to predict how many master’s degrees are needed in which field.

“A decent starting point would be to make bachelor’s degrees relatively general. After that, you could possibly reorient when you have more knowledge of your interests and abilities and what kind of competence is in demand.”

What happened to the “Bildung” in the title?

University of Helsinki Professor Emeritus Arto Mustajoki has witnessed the long trajectory of higher education institutions and was already pondering quality measurement in the 1990s.

The title of the Ministry of Education and Culture’s vision touts “Bildung” or sivistys in Finnish, which is at the very heart of quality higher education. However, Mustajoki feels the content does not particularly reflect the idea of the Humboldtian university with holistic education.

“It represents the spirit of the efficiency and marketing university. The vision emphasises the R&D part as a core function of university, which a rather narrow viewpoint.”

According to Mustajoki, it is important for core funding to be sufficient and the university to offer stimulating education. When the university produces talented and creative individuals, they take that talent to working life and research and development activity starts in different parts of society.

“Quality is not only a question within the university but depends on the kind of students coming into the university.”

As the number of people pursuing higher education grows, there is naturally more variance in the base level. Another important factor is the kind of personnel the higher education institution recruits.

“Quality is not only a question within the university but depends on the kind of students coming into the university.”

To Mustajoki, the vision appears as an uneven collection with “many cooks in the kitchen”. Certain turns of phrase leave room for ambiguity. He examines this part of the vision: “The responsible internationality of research and policies pertaining to research security are unified at the Government level.” He wonders if this is related to the same issue as the recent spat regarding academic funding and the national security of research.

“That would make it all the more baffling if it was written down her. That whole polemic revealed that trying to rein in Finnish science was not very wise.”

Mustajoki welcomes efforts to make higher education admission smoother and offering preparatory training to immigrants. There are other goals as well, but they are partially contradictory. For example, international studies are hampered by the pressure to graduate quickly.

The vision’s overall positivity is tempered at the end by a return to the harsh reality and the pressures of the public economy.

“If you read the vision all the way to the end, you find out that ho-hum, we cannot actually afford all this.”

Publication crisis and AI shift

University of Turku Professor of Gender Studies and media researcher Anu Koivunen finds the vision ambitious. It identifies genuine, timely issues such as the need to secure scientific freedom.

“My main observation always has to do with the boring question of how the vision relates to the reality of the public economy. What is the vision’s significance as a policy guide if politicians and officials talk about freezing indexes and 11 million euro adjustments?”

“The parties involved with the preparation completely disagreed with the suggestions of the political decisionmakers.”

The pressure to measure visible benefit is nothing new, of course, and justified in publicly funded activity. The specialisation of higher education institutions and reforming the system raise questions. The vision states this happens according to the institutions’ own starting points, but Koivunen does not see this as a given. She is reminded of the recent preparation of paid degrees in open higher education studies.

“The parties involved with the preparation completely disagreed with the suggestions of the political decisionmakers.”

The vision talks about quality but leaves the definition of quality ambiguous. According to Koivunen, quality means enough researchers, teachers, and their presence.

“In a time of generative AI, teaching based on human discourse, thinking, application, and interaction is emphasised.”

According to the vision, the higher education and science community progresses from the principles of responsible review to practical actions, and diverse types of academic merit recruitments are considered in recruitments. This can be interpreted to refer to the number of publications not being a sufficient way to evaluate research quality.

This is an extremely timely issue. There are already serious international conversations about publications losing their significance as a metric for scientific quality. Rankings and publication pressures combined with the AI deluge have increased the number of low-quality and dishonest publications exponentially. This July, Koivunen wrote about the scientific publication crisis in the Suomen Kuvalehti magazine.

“The scientific publication crisis, shifting professional structures, and role of generative AI challenge higher education in many ways. The vision does not yet note these trends.”