Internationalization on Michael’s Domain

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.

Good leadership?

Mon, 02 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

When I started as a principal investigator at the University of Helsinki , I was advised to take the “Good leadership” course which was arranged by Personnel Training . Together with 14 other research group leaders, I learned between November 2013 and March 2014 from Sanna-Marja Heinimo and other experts i.a. the “skills for effectively developing, coaching, empowering and leading others to getting best results”.At the end of the course, we had a dinner with Jukka Kola , who is now credited for implementating the extensive (and according to many observers overboarding) cost savings that were forced upon the university by the budget cuts mandated by the prevailing political powers.I do not want to discuss here whether such drastic measures were necessary or a less extensive savings strategy would have been sufficient. Even the decision whether to save or to practise deficit spending in an economic downturn is mostly not based on facts but on ideology. In economics, fashion and Zeitgeist are at work in addition to hard data. Therefore, it is not surprising that prominent economists are holding opposing views concerning the effects of deficit spending. But I go off on a tangent here…I simply wanted to express my total disappointment. Not in the savings themselves, but in the way HOW the savings were implemented in relation to the “good leadership” practises that we have been advised to practise.The decisions were not sufficiently openly discussed. Still now, the grounds for many lay-offs remain incomprehensible and controversial (see e.g. this article in the major Finnish daily newspaper Helsingin Sanomat). Since transparency was noticeably absent, the talk about good leadership by the top management of the university seemed to have been hardly more than lip service. I do not doubt that they have the best intentions in mind for the greater good of the university. Just who defines the greater good? Most oligarchs define it themselves, don’t they?So it is not surprising that in the recent workplace well-being survey, the satisfaction with the strategic leadership at the university level (rectors and vice-rectors) was at an all-time low. If the polls would be repeated now, the results would likely be much worse, especially if the fired people would still get a voice. Notably, it is not only the average employee of the University of Helsinki, who does not trust the leadership any more. My feeling is that the distrust now pervades researchers at all career stages. What future is possible with such a constellation?Google is consistently named among the best American companies to work for and they decided to spend millions of dollars and many years to research how to create the best work teams. The single most decisive factor in determining the innovation outcome, creativity and productivity of a team was psychological safety ( see this NYT Magazine article ). Guess how safe university employees are feeling at the moment.When we were talking with Jukka Kola, I was very impressed with his clear commitment towards increased internationalization at the University of Helsinki. However, I already wondered back then how realistic the goal to “actively recruit top international staff” is. Now it seems even more unlikely that this goal can be reached to a meaningful degree since universities start to experience a new wave of brain drain. Even at the students’ level, where the internationalization has made amazing progress in the last 20 years, we might see a decline with the introduction of tuition fees for non-EU/ETA students .