Blog: Above all, University is an opportunity

Finnish higher education is built on the idea of everyone’s right for education. This means the right to find your path, combine and change fields and build your competence without punishment. However, the Finnish government is now preparing a new rule of one study right per student in higher education institutions. If the change follows through, it would mean that students have to give up their previous right to study to start a new degree. It is a backwards change compared to the previous logic, assuming that attaining education is a speed race.

Many degree programmes are already tightly regulated and the restrictions for credits prevent attaining extensive minor subjects. For example, teacher training and psychology degrees are regulated so strictly that students can’t include new minors that would be important in working life in their degrees. If students can’t broaden their degrees from within, their only option is to apply for another degree. 

If students can’t broaden their degrees from within, their only option is to apply for another degree. 

This is especially worrying at present, when the working life requires multidisciplinary competence. Multidisciplinary competence is not a trend, but a real asset on the labour market. The new regulations make it harder and slower to attain this kind of competence.

There already are extensive quotas for first time students in higher education, which direct the student places to those who don’t have a previous study right in a higher education institution. Moreover, many applicants don’t accept their secondary study place, if their preferred study place is in a field with lots of applicants. There already is a mechanism that frees study places without restricting students’ right to build their multidisciplinary competence.

University is above all an opportunity, and its power is hidden in curiosity and freedom of thinking. The education provided by these is not a performance, and it can’t be measured with the amount of degrees or the speed of graduating. Education is a long journey, which requires time and opportunity to explore and sometimes fail and try again. Moreover, Universities’ role highlights comprehensive education, which is everyone’s right. 

University is above all an opportunity, and its power is hidden in curiosity and freedom of thinking.

The real bottlenecks are not created by students, but the lack of resources for teaching and guidance and the method of financing that rewards the number of degrees, not learning. Especially cutting the adult education allowance has weakened the opportunities to update your skills flexibly. Restricting the students’ opportunities doesn’t solve the problem, only transfers the responsibility to the students.

The University has never been in a vacuum separate from society. Its responsibility is to look further and offer a space where thinking can grow and exceed limits. This is why the limit of one study place boils down to a question about how we understand education and who it belongs to. 

That is why we need to pause and think about what kind of future we want to build. I hope that society understands that new ideas aren’t born in a separate field of science, but in a space where points of view meet and complement each other. Multidisciplinary is a requirement of the future, and it’s already visible in the working life and research can answer this by crossing traditional boundaries. Why should we restrict that?

The Blog is written by OYY’s Board Member responsible for Academic Affairs, Elli Myllymäki