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University Reform in Finland
9.4.2010
University of Minnesota
Antti Jauhiainen
Joona-Hermanni Mäkinen
Tuomas Salonen
Greetings all. We'd like to give a brief talk on the university reform in Finland, in order to
shed light on the common struggle we are facing and to collect themes and strategies
we've learned through this and create starting points of further discussion for us all. We
begin with the larger, worldwide context of university reforms, and then move to the finnish
experience we've had.
University reforms are a common theme to universities around the world. As we gather to
analyze and act on creating more participatory, equal and social forms of education and
human society, we wish to bring a summary of our experiences from Finland, which has
painfully endured reforms in step with infamous Bologna-process that has brought the
managerial, corporate system to universities around Europe.
Overall, the last few decades have been harsh for the Universities everywhere. Different,
profit oriented unification processes, WTO and IMF controlled standardization and lack of
continuity in communities, in part through the developments described, are all parts of a
wider restructuring of society.
These developments are threatening to consolidate the power and status of the neoliberal,
anti-democratic ideology, institutionally centered around corporations, the mode of
institution that has become prevalent in our current society.
Universities as well, despite the efforts of students and other popular movements, are
being forced more and more to this new corporate model of human communities.
Finland - A Social Democracy
These changes have been felt in nordic countries as well, even though our societies have
had respectable success in creating more equitable market economies, with strong
emphasis on public, state- or municipality driven services. Examples include wide public
library network, public schooling, strong welfare system and universal health care.
The incongruity between the nordic state welfare model and the profit-driven, neo-liberal
model of education factories is profound. This creates challenges, but also ample
opportunities for resistance. Decades of excellent experiences with state- and municipality
controlled institutions among the finnish people make flat-out open programs of
privatization and exclusions in education harder to pass.
Finnish universities have had a system of parlamentary decision making through equal
representation in the decision making bodies between students, mid-level teachers and
professors. This was result of a decade long campaign for changes in authoritarian
decision making in the university, which finally achieved some of it's goals in the early
1990's, when students and mid-level teachers each got third of the vote in all decision
making bodies in the university.
We believe this should have been only the first step in democratizing the decision making
towards a more participatory model, but unfortunately the movement towards this dried up
pretty soon after first concrete achievements. The trust on parlamentary decision making
soon stifled the popular movement, and as Finland suffered through a painful recession in
the early 90's people placed their trust on their newly elected representatives in Student
Unions and Faculty Boards.
Powerlessness and gullible trust
In the finnish society in general people suffer from powerlessness and lack of confidence
in their own possibilities to have effect on processes of change. Instead, power and
change are viewed as something hidden elsewhere, with decisions made beforehand.
One grim example of this is a statement by prime minister Matti Vanhanen, saying that
people shouldn't meddle in official's decision making process beforehand, and then he
stated elsewhere that after parliamentary decisions are voted on, people shouldn't
complain about them and focus instead on their daily affairs.
With culture like this, active participation is problematic to organize. It is characterized by
lack of confidence, general feeling of powerlessness and highly bureaucratic system that is
distant for people. The political sphere of life is considered something that is separate from
ordinary life, with politicians and experts making the "enlightened", "complex" decisions
and setting the pace for the direction of the society. People have relatively strong trust on
the public institutions and on officials to strive for the common good in the actions. The
concrete, sometimes disastrous results of the officials neo-liberal policies in Finland are
rarely discussed, with critical voices marginalized and even ridiculed in prime time
discussion and editorials.
The finnish university community, meanwhile, had idealized the model of "passive",
"objective" intellectual, one which abstains from involvement in any political affairs.
The Privatization Reform of 2009
The privatization reform of 2009 was about restructuring the finnish university system into
a managerial, profit-oriented system, in order to compete more effectively on the neoliberal
marketplace of human capital. This meant opening universities for private investors
and thus allowing the market driven principles to determine more strongly the kind of
knowledge that is being produced through capitalist market mechanisms.
This has already caused deterioration of teachers, researchers and employees rights,
worsening of study conditions and heavy focus and financing on certain study areas that
are beneficial to investors. In Finland, this financing is heavily focused on just some key
areas such as technical and biological (for example, pharmaseutics) research. Thus, any
small researh field and smaller universities is now in real danger of "bankrupcy" as the
university administration has labeled the situation.
This systemic overhaul of Finland universities originates from planning papers by
University principals and officials in the ministry of education. It was a logical extension of
the much opposed payment reforms from the beginning of the decade, and ideas for the
very broad restructuring were visible already then.
Even though official comments were requested from the parlamentary councils, it was to
no avail - the opposition visible in these comments could easily be bypassed as this
parliamentary process received almost no public attention, thanks largely to the huge
amount of red tape and meaningless bureautecratic decisions that the parlamentary
boards were buried in.
One particular theme in the finnish university reform was the role of the administration and
the seemingly concentrated and well-planned nature of the reform. From what we've
gathered from comments from within the finnish parliament, the administration of the
universities was very active in promoting and lobbying members of the parliament to
support the law in the june vote. The lobbying by the administration apparently intensified
with the public protests and proclamations during the spring, which shows considerable
disdain from the administration towards democracy and the opinion of the scientific
community in Finland.
After all the official papers were given and the university administration brought the issue
openly into discussion as the "common project of the University", the struggle really began;
hoping to change the legislation at the last moment with proclamations, demonstrations
and pleas for at least changes in different wordings of the legislation draft, the university
community came at least loosely together in resistance.
The general belief amongst the university community was that this was to be just one
among many reforms. All the universities in Finland were bombarded with different reforms
through the 1990's and early 2000. This is reminiscent of many other countries. The
apathy felt as all these reforms passed one by one was greatly contributing to the lack of
response early-on to this "biggest reform for centuries", as the minister of education
applauded it.
Unfortunately, the popular resistance that finally organized to oppose the privatization
reform was quite effectively countered by what writer and journalist Naomi Klein describes
as the shock doctrine - a very quick, massive transformations that give very little time for
the public, let alone public institutions, to respond. The creation of Aalto University, and the
university reform law of 2009 overall, can be seen as prime examples of this strategy. It's
important to notice that this process was also speeded with bad briefing and even
misinformation and lies. The ruthlessness of all this speaks of the determination of the
finnish administration to push these reforms through.
The popular struggle against this reform started to pick up speed at a rather late point of
the official plans of passing the required legislation in Finland for privatizing universities.
This is not to say there wasn't effort to get the issue more in the general awareness since
early on, but rather that those efforts failed, for various reasons - for example the general
public discourse on decision making I described earlier.
This is, of course, a very "responsive" and late way of organizing resistance, and one the
finnish university principals and administration was probably somewhat prepared for.
What we've learned
Vision. A credible utopia, clearly articulated and well argumented, more just and free,
peaceful alternative social order. We don't wish to suggest any sort of blueprint or "system"
for any new order, but the recognition and empowered articulation of the ideals and aims
we strive for. A vision is just that - a horizont towards which we strive, and which we can
proudly proclaim is closer with every occupation, every new discussion group and
resistance to power anywhere.
Daily empowerment. We need everyone's support and participation, and to attain this we
should strive for actions and activities that provide equal space and respect for all
participants. For this, we should look for daily, continuous and empowering, positive
modes of social activity that encourage and cherish the ideals we hope to attain more
widely. Gender equality, income equality, empowered participation and just distribution of
work are all something we should create through our daily efforts.
Internationality. We wish to create networks of resistance with people from other
universities, and to join in the global discussion for an alternate, sustainable new
society and social organization, clear articulation of which is not only a project for a better,
more equitable and participatory society, but more and more paramount for human
survival. To quote a great american song: universally we will stand, and divided we will fall.
It would help us all immensely if we put some of our effort into creating stronger networks
all throughout the world, to know what people in similar situations elsewhere are going
through and to strenghten solidarity and true, strategic co-operation everywhere.
We strongly believe that with dedication and by working connectedly and in sync we can
overturn these reforms, begin the historical process of creating a truly ambitious global
university that is open for all and in the end, achieve truly anything. Love conquers all.
Peace out, Minneapolis.
University Reform in Finland.pdf
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