English on Michael’s Domain

English or Finnish?

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I am teaching to Bachelor, Master and PhD students at the University of Helsinki . While almost all Master’s and PhD theses in the life sciences are written in English, I am always discussing with BSc students the question of whether to write the thesis in Finnish or English. I am comfortable with both Finnish and English, but when you need to decide, you might want to consider a few things:

Language boost

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I am having a new attempt at learning Finnish! Until very recently, my career has progressed in Meilahti at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki. After the Research Fellow period financed by the Academy of Finland, my career prospects at Meilahti were meager at best, as almost all vacancies require good Finnish or Swedish language skills. In Finnish medical schools - unlike in many other study programs - you have to be able to teach in Finnish or Swedish. In other EU countries, there are many universities where you can study medicine without knowing a word of the local language, but Finland does not (yet) recruit foreign students for medical degrees.Before I started to study at the university, I was already once in similar language trouble. In the autumn of 1989, when the political changes in Eastern Europe made free travel possible, I decided to visit Hungary. My interest in Hungary originated from several Hungarian friends of mine, who were living in exile in former West Germany. When I arrived in Hungary in the spring of 1990, I did not speak a single word Hungarian. However, none of my Hungarian friends ever spoke anything to me but Hungarian. I remember with particular fondness Tomi and Timea and all their family and friends who patiently listened to my ramblings and corrected grammatical errors in my speech. Learning Finnish in Finland is different. Why does nobody want to put up with my bad Finnish? I have come across the idea that Finnish people are not used to foreign accents. I don’t subscribe to this explanation. The former Eastern European countries were at the time also isolated and linguistically homogeneous - in much the same way as Finland. Is it perhaps because nowadays nobody seems to have time for anything? In the autumn semester, I took part in a Finnish language course offered by the University of Helsinki. The course was part of the language boost (kielibuusti) project. Studying languages takes time. We always wonder how young children are so good at learning languages, but we forget that they are learning full-time. The Finnish language course has certainly affected my other work, and for this reason, I fully understand those foreign researchers who do not even waste a single second learning Finnish.As far as learning Finnish is concerned, I think the problem is not so much with the course offerings, although they could be better. The problem is rather that you don’t get to exercise your Finnish in real life because there is always someone around who - for very good reasons - doesn’t know Finnish or doesn’t want to learn it. In my own lab, all the native languages of the lab members - including Finnish - are minority languages. And without exception, all the people I talk to speak excellent English. It takes real effort to use any other language than English (that also applies to my own mother tongue, German). One of the goals of the Language Boost course was to get ourselves a language buddy, someone with whom we could communicate regularly in Finnish. After half a year, I am still without a language buddy. Although the teachers on the course were excellent, two hours of Finnish a week is unfortunately not enough.I know several researchers who have come to Finland from abroad and who speak excellent Finnish. However, most of them have family ties to Finland. Therefore, they have had to deal with Finns who do not speak English. They were forced to learn to speak Finnish. The same thing happened to me in Hungary 30 years ago: most people did not learn English at school. We had only one language of communication, and I used it all day long in all situations.This post was inspired by Reetta Vairimaa's article "Claudia and Celia" in the magazine Yliopistolainen (1/2018), which unfortunately is not available online.``Here is another aspect of the problem: There is simply not enough time to study Finnish for most foreign researchers. Compared to their native counterparts, they have already a higher workload even without learning Finnish. Building up a network - both professionally and privately - is lots of work. The numbers of Finnish learners at universities (20-30%) that were mentioned in this Acatiimi article ([Too few people study Finnish or Swedish](https://acatiimi.fi/2022/02/07/too-few-people-study-finnish-or-swedish/)) sound very high to me. I know lots of foreign researchers but very few of them have substantial knowledge of Finnish (but perhaps that is only true for Ph.D. students, which are overrepresented in my distorted view).

Lymphologie 2019

Sat, 12 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A week ago, I visited Germany to participate in the Lymphologie 2019 conference, which took place in Bad Krozingen near Freiburg.The conference is jointly organized every two years by the DGL ( Deutsche Gesellschaft für Lymphologie ) and the GDL ( Gesellschaft Deutschsprachiger Lymphologen ). The meeting is overall very hands-on and clinically oriented with many workshops and practical advice. Therefore, it’s highly recommended for practitioners who are able to understand German. However, there is also a “basic science” track, and the organizers always manage to recruit some decent scientists for this track (see here: https://www.lymphologie-kongress.de/programm/samstag-03-10-15/) . Notably, the talks are delivered in German, which doesn’t make the recruiting task easier. Lymphologists in Germany continue to play a leading role in the treatment of lymphedema (and recently lipedema) with uniquely specialized experts and facilities ( Földiklinik ), but English has become the language of biomedical research also in Germany. However, there is still a need for dissemination of research results in German language and that’s why I contribute occasionally to the German-language journal “Lymphologie in Forschung und Praxis”.

Internationalization in everyday operations at Meilahti campus

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Meet the rectors at MeilahtiLast Thursday (18.10.2018), the new rector of Helsinki University Jari Niemelä and the four vice-rectors (Sari Lindblom, Paula Eerola, Hanna Snellman, Tom Böhling) visited the Meilahti campus for an open question and answer event. Hardly any foreigners were present during the event. Consequently, the language of communication was Finnish. Obviously, foreigners won’t participate if they do not understand and speak the language of the event. And since foreigner’s don’t participate, there is no reason to change the language of the event, and so the circle continues… Traditionally Finnish and Swedish onlyThe Meilahti campus holds a special position when it comes to language use since until very recently, it was impossible to receive a degree from Meilahti without knowing Finnish or Swedish since the only degree programs were not offered in English. However, the situation has been changing (e.g. with the move of the Psychology Department to Meilahti and the establishment of new degree programs like TRANSMED ), but old habits die hard. Trailblazers RPU and HiLIFEThe trailblazers for internationalization at the Meilahti campus are the Research Programs Unit and HiLIFE. The postgraduate students and postdocs of the Research Programs Unit (RPU) and the HiLIFE recruitments are the two most internationalized parts of the Meilahti campus and consequently, Hannu Sariola (previous vice dean for research at Meilahti) and Tomi Mäkelä (the HiLIFE director) brought up the topic of internationalization pointing out that the rules of the university allow for more language flexibility than is actually implemented. To date, the only official languages at the University of Helsinki are Finnish and Swedish, although more English-speaking than Swedish-speaking students are enrolled. English is also the de-facto language of almost all scientific endeavors. Balancing the domestic languages with English likely has no perfect solution. If the university wants to optimize its international impact and success, the role of Finnish and Swedish inevitable has to decline unless massively more resources become available.**Separate events?**In order to engage the foreign staff as well, the dean of the faculty recently organized the faculty staff meeting twice: once in English and once in Finnish. I am not sure whether such separation is a long-term good idea, but it addresses the issue pragmatically and gets the job done. If someone suggested separating the faculty X-mas party according to language, that would be considered discriminatory, but for a working meeting, nobody seems to object…**PS:**I am not the only one who is aware that internationalization has a long way to go. There is a nice article on the Helsinki University intranet portraying the new vice rector Hanna Snellman and her take on the issue: https://flamma.helsinki.fi/en/HY377022 . However, the university keeps most of its interesting web content behind locked doors (inside their Flamma service), inaccessible to the general public, who is paying the university’s bills… What does the university fear? More transparency?

Overrun by the Big Wheel?

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Despite focus on internationalization English information about education reform incomplete and lateThe Big Wheel reform is rolling over me and I don’t notice it. There has been some information in English about the process on the University’s intranet . However, during the drafting, most of the documents were initially only available in Finnish and due to the delay caused by translation, foreign staff without English language proficiency was largely excluded from the process. Loosing this input was certainly not helpful, since several goals of the Big Wheel reform are related to internationalization, e.g. harmonizing the degree structures within Europe (“3+2+3 system”) and making the degree programmes internationally attractive and competitive.Excellent students potentially excluded from studying at our UniversityConcluding from the application numbers for the Master’s programmes that’ll start in September 2017, there is still much work to be done to make the programmes “internationally attractive and competitive”. Virtually all programmes reported a decline in applications from Non-EU/EEA countries, which probably will result in much less income from tuition fees than the university would like (Master’s thesis tuition fees at the University of Helsinki are between 13000 and 18000€/year depending on the programme). We probably loose potentially excellent students and there is a diffuse suspicion that the general level of education might suffer. 30 scholarships of varying amounts are available for Non-EU/EEA students. However, only about 10 of the recipients will be able to completely recoup the tuition fee with their scholarship (see here: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/studying/how-to-apply/scholarship-programme) . I also think that the advertisement for the study programmes could be definitely improved.Information about available scholarships: clear enough or confusing? I also fear that many potential applicants were confused about the scholarship programme (so was I, and still am). Our own Master’s programme’s web pages ( https://www.helsinki.fi/en/programmes/master/translational-medicine-transmed ) do not mention the scholarships prominently (or was that on purpose?). Even worse, the link on the Helsinki University’s pages to check whether or not a student is required to pay the tuition fee has been half dead for a while (“You can check this FAQ at the Studyinfo website whether or not you are required to pay tuition fees” (original on this page ). Hopefully it died only after the application deadline finished…Educational reform of the PhD degreeThe Big Wheel reform concerns all three degrees: Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate (PhD). Internationalization is especially relevant to the PhD degree and those Master’s programmes that are entirely in English (e.g. Translational Medicine or Life Science Informatics). Even though about half all PhD students in my unit (Research Programs Unit) are foreigners, hardly any of them knows what the “Big Wheel” is about. Big Wheel discussion at Meilahti campusAfter almost all is set and done, an info event about the Big Wheel was announced for the Meilahti campus (31.3.2017). The e-mail message was exclusively in Finnish. I often have given feedback when important events were not announced in English (more often than not getting no response). That’s why I wrote a message straight to the rector and the vice rector of the university. The e-mail conversation is attached below. Suffice to say that the university is still dedicated to increase internationalization despite this not being without problems…What was discussed at the hearingThe part of the discussion that happened in English was circling around the PhD education. A very valid request was not to fix something that is not broken. In the international comparison, PhD education is for the most part excellent in Finland and the only perceived problem is its length.At the moment a Finnish PhD thesis in life science requires the graduate student to publish in scientific journals. As a consequence, most of the research in Finland is done by PhD students. The exact number and quality of publications required differs between faculties as there is no formal consensus. Typical are 3-5 papers, sharing of authorship is accepted to a certain degree. Not all publications need to be first-author contributions.Finish PhD graduates are competitiveWhile a PhD from a Finnish University is internationally very competitive, PhD graduates are typically much older than those from most other countries. This begs the question: so what? The typical length of PhD studies in Finland has been generally assumed to be around 7 years. However, nobody knows exactly (not even the university itself, since tight rules to register PhD studies have not existed until recently), but there seems to be a very slow movement towards a shorter duration (and less requirements). Strong forces act against shortening of PhD studiesThe fact that the PhD studies last so long in Finland is the result of natural selection. Pushing with regulation for faster PhD education will have many unintended consequences. There are strong forces acting against shortening the PhD studies, especially for highly talented students that aim at an academic career: E.g. the relative ease to get scholarship funding during the PhD studies and the high unemployment among fresh PhDs in Finland.Age limits for PhD degrees for fundingPointed out by Kalle Saksela, a major obstacle to shorting the PhD education is the general funding situation of academic research. With every funding cycle, funding rates are pushing new all time lows. Successful applicants have a very compelling portfolio of high quality publications, which needs time to acquire. However, major competitive research funding (Academy of Finland, ERC) puts limits on applicants (e.g. “no more than 7 years after PhD completion”), which have no relationship to the quality of the application.Four yearsThe very clear message from vice rector Hämäläinen (Jukka Kola had already left the discussion, when it switched from Finnish to English) was that the PhD studies must be shortened in order to reach comparability with other countries. The target is 3+2+4 (3 years for the Bachelor’s studies, 2 more years for the Master’s studies, and then 4 years for the PhD studies). The idea put forward by the vice rector was to simply move some of the studies that are done at the moment under the PhD umbrella into the early postdoctoral period. A big question is obviously who is going to pay for this move? There needs to be a substantial increase in research funding to be able to pay salaries for postdocs unless we want to lower the overall domestic research output. Already now it borders to financial suicide to employ a postdoc with an Academy Research Fellow budget.

Zu zweit

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Just the Two of Us

My little darling! I believe the streetlamps here are all mixed up. I believe not a single paving stone is in its proper place anymore. And the houses, look, the Lord in his wrath has knocked them on their sides. For the first time, it is just the two of us alone.