We must know how to take advantage of the university reform
Universities have now been following the new Universities Act for almost a year. The staff of University of Oulu met on Tuesday, 21 September, in a common “Where are we now” briefing to hear how the reform year has gone.
In the beginning of the briefing Rector Lauri Lajunen reminded that the reason behind compiling the new Universities Act was to reform the universities. “The university reform must be taken advantage of as well as possible.”
The reform year has changed many practices, and new operational models will still be broken in this year. Even though the new legislation increased the autonomy of universities, the state as the basic funder will regulate e.g. the fields of education available at various universities and the fields in which degrees are awarded.
“The policies of the Ministry of Education and Culture are strict, and we must do what we are expected to do. What the new more streamlined performance management laid down in the new Universities Act means in practice is that negotiations will only be conducted once every four years.”
According to Lajunen, new challenges for higher education institutions are the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of their operations, as well as international competitive strength.
Lajunen feels that the central issue in the next government platform will be the structural development of higher education institutions. “The Ministry of Education and Culture has emphasised that there are too many university and polytechnic units, namely, 130. However, structural development is in progress, and the amount of universities, for instance, has been successfully decreased through amalgamations", Lajunen stated.
The fields in which there is an oversupply of education have been identified on the national level, and it will be absolutely necessary to make changes. For instance, in the fields of technology, teacher education and the humanities, the number of available study places must be decreased, while in health care there is a need for an increase.
Degree performance must be improved
Universities must profile themselves as experts on education and reserch, and through that, they must identify those areas they will give up. The expanding of the funding base and acquring supplementary funding will gain more and more significance in terms of improving university research.
Vice Rector of Research Taina Pihlajaniemi emphasised that it is important for all universities to conduct research that is societally significant. “We must identify internationally significant focus areas that are characteristic of us. In so doing we will further define our scientific focus.”
The University of Oulu spends more money per graduate than other Finnish universities in average. Dropping out is more frequent here as well. These problems have been tackled through strategic measures. “We must maximise the number of completed degrees in 2010–2011, because this performance has a direct effect on university funding from 2013 through 2016”, stressed Vice Rector of Education Olli Silvén.
The government budget proposal for 2011 bodes moderately well for universities. “The most important item is the university index, which will increase the level of basic funding 2,9 per cent compared to this year. That is not an extra, but a compensation for the cost increases of the last few years”, explained Director of Finance Sami Klemola.
The budget proposal also has leeway for the improvement of the liquidity of universities, for ensuring operational resources and for VAT compensation. The University Senate has made a definition of policy that the university must reach a break-even point in 2011.
The next critical year will be 2013. Areas of uncertainty will be possible governmental retrenchments, changes to the fund distribution model of the Ministry of Education and Culture, as well as the capabilities and performance of both the University of Oulu and other universities. "It would be good to be able to foresee these”, Klemola stated.
