University of Vaasa News 2010

news 2010

UNIVERSITY OF VAASA

The wickedness of democracy How to measure intangible capital?

Becoming multilingual is easy

The energy network of the future

news

UNIVERSITY OF VAASA

2010 University of Vaasa News To partners, alumni, and anyone else interested in the University

Rector’s editorial ...............................................................

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Becoming multilingual? .....................................................

The language immersion programme is still going strong after twenty years

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No need for dictionaries..................................................

Children distinguish different languages from the day they are born

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Grasping the intangible .....................................................

Innodrive project seeks new ways to measure intangible capital

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To do the right thing – and to do it right .....................

An unusual study probes into the ethics of the Finnish public sector

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Democracy for beginners .................................................

A study on deliberative democracy

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Graphic design and layout Advertising agency Bock’s Office

Power for the people.........................................................

Finland’s decentralised energy network of the future relies on surprising sources

Front cover photo Mikko Lehtimäki

Sea change ..........................................................................

The landscape of higher education is changing in Finland

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Beyond differences ............................................................

New cultural perspectives offer fresh ideas to international business

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Column: The one-armed nation ....................................

by Gerald Porter

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A city of multitudes ...........................................................

Vaasa offers more than just beautiful surroundings

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Publisher University of Vaasa Editorial staff Editor-in-chief Virpi Viertola Sub-editor Ninna Kujala Writer Andras Szabó, unless otherwise stated MA Andras Szabó from Hungary is a former master’s degree student from the University of Vaasa. He has written for international papers in Finland and abroad.

Photography Mikko Lehtimäki, unless otherwise stated The researchers presented in this journal were photographed on the university campus at the end of August. The journal was published in October 2010.

Back cover photo Svenna Martens The University’s photo archive Print Oy Litoset Ab Editorial office University of Vaasa, Communications and PR PO Box 700 FI-65101 Vaasa Subscription inquiries, address changes, and feedback viestinta@uwasa.fi The editors are happy to receive ideas, hints about stories, and feedback on this issue of the University of Vaasa News.

ISSN 1796-9158

www.uwasa.fi

Being global minded Our international master’s programmes have proved Our strategy emphasizes to be successful. We have more than 1 500 applicants internationalism in many annually. These programmes give Finnish students an forms. Student exchange opportunity to study side by side with international programs have been students and to master course content in English, thus successful and offer 200 preparing them for more international career options. In students an opportunity particular, two of our master’s programmes: Intercultural to study abroad for one or studies in communication and administration (ICS), and two terms each year. We International business studies (IBS) are making special also receive approximately efforts to give students a global and international mind-set.

200 international students The ICS programme combines public administration who study in our Englishand humanities, comparing governance in international medium study modules contexts and addressing issues of cultural difference and side by side with Finnish cultural identity. This program builds on its multicultural students. student body as an essential part of the study experience.

Personal experiences The IBS programme addresses marketing and abroad are important self-confidence building human resources issues in international companies and opportunities, allowing students to make new lifelong companies taking steps into international markets. It friends. We have developed our partner network for gives students a unique chance to work in about twenty years. Some of these partners multicultural study groups and project teams. are institutions similar to us in size and We are reaching out The high quality of the IBS programme was orientation. Some are faculties at the to continents that acknowledged by EFMD (the European highest level of academic performance. represent future Foundation for Management Development), We have focused on Europe and the markets for Finnish Erasmus network, but are also reaching out companies and future and the IBS programme received EPAS (EFMD Programme Accreditation System) to continents that represent future markets career opportunities accreditation this summer. for Finnish companies and future career for our students.

In order to be successful in the future, opportunities for our students. Our partner we need to further develop our faculty network is reassessed continuously. We are members’ international skills and to insure that we in the process of building more extensive partnerships have a continuously growing number of international with prominent existing partners but, at the same time, professors, researchers and teachers visiting us or are looking for new opportunities. joining us permanently.

International orientation pertains not only to Our goal is to be an international university. This students choosing to travel abroad. We offer every goal can be reached only if it is shared by all members student a course module in intercultural competence. of the university community, from senior professors to We are also developing our foreign language offerings each fi rst year student. to cover the languages of our partner network.

Matti Jakobsson Rector

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Becoming multilingual?

Swedish immersion programme for kids – a twenty-year success story for the University.

Bilingual Finland Sweden and the Swedish language have historically been a tremendous influence on Finland. Between the 13th and 19th centuries, the country was part of Sweden, and to this day, Swedish is the other official language of Finland. According to Statistics Finland, about 4 UNIVERSITY of VAASA

5.5% of the population uses Swedish as their mother tongue, but the ratio is much higher in coastal Vaasa. In the city itself, a quarter of the population (24.8%) is Swedish-speaking, while some of the towns around Vaasa even have a Swedish-speaking majority.

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anguage immersion is a teaching method, based on the idea that the best way to learn a language is to learn it in practice. Instead of taking dedicated language courses, immersion students study a majority of other subjects – such as math, biology or the like – in the foreign language. In the classroom, the teacher only speaks the target language, which students learn “naturally”, in the same way as babies acquire their mother tongue.

Language immersion can be used to teach any given language. The University, in cooperation with the city of Vaasa, has been running a Swedish immersion programme for Finnish speaking kids for more than twenty years.

“In Vaasa, children start their immersion at the age of five, in a special kindergarten group. The programme ends after the pupils finish their obligatory primary education,” explains professor Siv Björklund, coordinator of the University’s Centre for Immersion and Multilingualism. “Instead of studying in their mother tongue, immersion students study their subjects in Swedish from the very first day.”

Since the children start off with no previous knowledge of the target language, teaching initially involves a lot

of non-verbal communication, such as gestures and the use of pictures.

From two – to many The idea of studying math in a language you don’t understand at all might seem crazy at first, but by now a large body of evidence shows that language immersion works well. According to statistics about the city of Vaasa, former immersion students tend to outperform the average in secondary education – not only in the subject of Swedish, but in other subjects too.

“At the start of the programme, there was a vivid debate about immersion.

Many citizens were afraid whether it made sense at all. But by now, no one Professor Siv Björklund

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doubts the efficiency of immersion, and there is actually an over-demand for study places,” comments Björklund, adding that about forty new students enrol in the immersion programme every year.

The Centre for Immersion and Multilingualism is now researching how immersion could help students in learning not only one, but several languages.

“There are many things that are still unclear about how knowing one language contributes to learning other ones,” explains Björklund. “But what is sure is that learning and speaking several languages need not be confusing. Our brains are not like computer disks where storing some new information means you have to get rid of something older.”

No need for dictionaries There is nothing tricky about being bilingual – it all comes naturally.

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people ”It is only one n up with w o r g g n i hav find ngue who o t r e h t o m g.”” m puzzlin bilingualliis

f you are a person from a monolingual family, being bilingual might seem like an enviable, but slightly risky alternative. Sure, it would be great to learn two mother tongues at the same time, but how can you make sure this won’t lead to confusion, and to growing up without speaking either of the languages really well?

Luckily, there is no such danger, argues Raija Berglund, Ph.D., university lecturer and researcher of natural bilingualism.

“Children can distinguish between different languages practically from the day they are born,” explains Berglund.

“Not only do they not get confused by different languages, but they also quickly learn to use them and to switch between them consciously, as the situation or their own needs demand.”

For instance, children tend to bind languages to persons – but these bounds can be overridden.

“Say, the kid has learnt that Mom always speaks Finnish. But if suddenly she starts to talk in Swedish, because of a third person present at the conversation, the kid will realize tthat and switch languages as well, without a problem,” says w Berglund.

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It’s child’s play!

B Berglund studied for years how a child growing up in a bilingual family develops his language strategies. Curiously, the child in question was her own son.

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Raija Berglund, Ph.D.

“Parents studying their kids is a common and accepted way of doing linguistic research. Nobody is in a better position to observe how a child is growing up, or interpret better what the child is communicating,” she explains.

Her research provides ample evidence of children’s natural talent to juggle languages.

“It is only people having grown up with only one mother tongue who find bilingualism puzzling,” she says, and adds: “It is in fact the most natural phenomenon. A bilingual person never has to stop and think about being bilingual.”

Berglund suggests that expecting bilingual families should plan in advance how they will use the languages around the baby, because a consistent pattern of language use will make it easier for the child to learn them. But the most important thing is not to worry about it too much, and keep things as natural as possible.

Grasping the intangible As question marks arise about innovation and competitiveness in Europe, a project lead by the University of Vaasa is set to clear the picture.

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financial results. Or, as ad mogul David Ogilvy put it: half of what you spend on advertising goes to waste – but nobody knows which half.

That in itself would justify a study – even if the EU was not especially interested in intangibles. But as a matter of fact, it is.

“Innovativeness has been a central concern for the EU. Its so-called Lisbon strategy set the objective to become the most competitive economy by 2010, and competitiveness should stem from being innovative,” explains professor Hannu Piekkola, in charge of the Innodrive project.

“Intangible capital, on the other hand, is important because it can be used as a proxy to measure innovativeness – a task which otherwise would be extremely difficult.”

nnodrive is an international research project, funded largely by the European Union, and coordinated by the Department of Economics. It seeks new ways to measure intangible capital, and its contribution to the financial performance of companies.

Intangibles refer to assets and activities of the firm that create value but don’t enter the books as investment. Instead, they are treated as expenses: expenditure on management and marketing, on research and development, on advertising or on IT are but a few examples of intangible capital investment that can be expected to yield added value.

But because of the nature of this intangible capital, little is known about how it actually contributes to the overall

>>

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>> Warning signs

Fact sheet: Innodrive – Intangible Capital and Innovation: Drivers of Growth in the EU Project schedule

2008 – 2011

Total budget

€ 1.9 million; contribution by the EU: € 1.5 million

Project coordinator

University of Vaasa

Partners

Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium German Institute for Economic Research Statistics Norway National Institute of Economic and Social Research, UK Institute for Economic Research, Slovenia Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, Finland Centre for Economic Research and Graduate Education of Charles University, Czech Republic LUISS Guido Carli University, Italy

More information

www.innodrive.org

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Innodrive set out to measure intangible capital both on the level of companies in six European countries, and on the level of national economies in each of the current 27 members of the EU. In addition to its comprehensive nature, the methods that it uses set the project apart from similar initiatives. With its new statistical measurements, it is possible to render the innovativeness of different national economies comparable.

The first results reveal a sobering picture: in the first five years of the Lisbon strategy, from 2001 to 2005, innovation seems to have, at best, stagnated in Europe. Intangible capital investment stayed at an average rate of 4% of the GDP, with the figure dropping in almost all of the EU-15 countries.

While this is certainly a warning sign to European competitiveness, there is more to the picture than meets the eye.

“One factor that might explain at least some of the slowdown is that production, drawn by labour costs, is moving away from Europe. Some of the intangible capital – such as R&D – is invested where the actual manufacturing takes place; so while a lot of companies are being innovative, as long as they are producing outside Europe, their intangible investments are not shown in European national accounts,” explains Piekkola.

While overall European innovativeness seems sluggish, some Eastern European countries show signs of increasing intangible capital investment. According to Piekkola, this is likely to be explained by lower initial levels of innovativeness.

“National differences make creating an easy-to-use innovativeness index problematic,” he adds. There has been talk of such an index in the ranks of the EU but, as Piekkola points out, it is not clear where the common starting line should be drawn. It is easier to produce stellar growth if you start from a lower base – and unless it could account for such distortions, even the most easily understandable index might be useless.

New intangible capital investment as share of GDP: selected European countries; change in percentage points from 1995 to 2000 Source: Innodrive

Firm principles “On the firm-level, we are analysing datasets that link information about employees to the firms’ results,” says Piekkola.

These datasets contain information about every single employee of a given company. Not only do they reveal the

exact organization of the firm (how many people perform what functions), but they also tell about wages and personal career developments. For data protection purposes, it is not possible to identify individual employees by name from these datasets.

New intangible investment as share of GDP: selected European countries, change in percentage points from 2000 to 2005 Source: Innodrive

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“Because all this information is linked to information about the financial performance, we in theory can find out how a particular organization of employees or a particular salary scheme is influencing the firm’s productivity,” explains Piekkola.

The project most certainly does not aim at giving an ultimate recipe of success for companies, along the lines of “if you run a restaurant franchise, you should employ no more than 5.66 people for marketing”. But it takes a large step towards improving market value estimates.

“That intangible capital is important is nothing new. Analysts have always tried to measure the market value of companies by trying to estimate their intangibles. But our objective is to give them better tools for doing so,” says Piekkola.

Grey matter – “black” economy If the new statistical measures of Innodrive become part of the standard, they might have a profound impact on something else, in addition to our understanding of intangible capital.

Namely, the new measures create new ways to calculate a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) figure – and this matters partly because GDP is the basis of financial rights and responsibilities of EU countries.

“Intangible capital investment is hidden in current GDP calculations.

Finland benefits from this: we are highly innovative, so according to Innodrive’s measures, our GDP would be higher.

This would mean we would be entitled to less EU-subsidies,” Piekkola explains, and adds: “This is our black economy!”

What will happen to this “black economy,” and how the EU will try to prevent the further decline of innovation, remains to be seen. But what is sure is that Innodrive already put Vaasa on several maps in EU offices.

To do the right thing – and to do it right An unusual study probes into the ethics of the Finnish public sector.

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he proverbial man of the street is not expected to have the insight of expert scientists. But in the field of public sector ethics, his honest opinion is just as important. A recently concluded project tapped into this resource, in order to find out how Finnish citizens see their own system of public administration.

The three-year project, with the budget of 300,000, was headed by Professor Ari Salminen from the Department of Public Management.

“Taking the citizens’ perspective is not the usual approach to research projects dealing with public sector ethics,” says Salminen. “In spite of that, the Academy of Finland decided to provide funding for the project.”

Trust and old friends Finland has traditionally been among the least corrupt countries, according to the Transparency International’s corruption perception index (CPI). Similarly to this index, the University’s research project measured citizens’ perception of the country’s governance.

“In general, Finnish people strongly trust public institutions as such,” Salminen points out. “But our survey revealed that at the same time, trust in politicians is much weaker.”

Similarly, the project established that the general perception of laws and regulations is positive, but their practical application is much less so.

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“The principles of good administration are seen as just and promoting equality, but in reality, they don’t seem to work quite as well,” comments Salminen.

“Still, corruption in general is not seen as a serious problem, especially not in its heavier forms.”

The survey revealed that citizens consider networks of personal favours and influence – the so-called “old boy networks” – the most vexing problem of their public administration. In contrast, citizens agreed that serious crimes such as theft and embezzlement in the ranks of public authorities were almost unheard of.

Be good – pay taxes!

The project also mapped Finns’ views of what it takes to be a good citizen. The answer?

“First and foremost, you should pay your taxes! And sort your household waste,” says Salminen, smiling. “But for instance political activism was not seen as an important part of being a good citizen,” he adds.

The next large project of the department is set to focus on the ethical challenges of municipal governance. But before that, another study is conducted, measuring youngsters’ opinion on public authorities. The survey of 16-17 year old kids, who have comparatively little experience of public services, is expected to reveal how young people’s ethical perceptions differ from that of adults.

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Democracy for beginners Deliberative democracy offers solutions to complex societal problems.

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eliberative democracy is a hot topic in the field of social sciences.

The concept is based on the idea that democratic decisions should be the outcome of the careful consideration and reasoned debate of the citizens.

It is easy to see the hypothetical merits of such an arrangement – but how deliberation could be put into practice raises questions over questions.

A research project, lead by researcher Harri Raisio and university lecturer Seija Ollila, from the Department of Social and Health Management, is set to deliver some of the answers.

“Getting all the citizens of a country to debate about public problems would be impossible even in theory. But we can try on a lower scale,” says Raisio. “We are experimenting with the deliberative assembly of youngsters.”

Schoolstudents taking part in the project are invited to a three-day session.

Their task there is to get informed and debate about issues that they themselves consider important. The researches, meanwhile, monitor the discussions and experiment with various practical arrangements to see how deliberation could – and how it couldn’t – work in practice, on a larger scale.

The research project is conducted with the support of professor Pirkko Vartiainen and the BoWer-network. For more details see www.welfarebower.fi

Gordian knots An advantage of deliberation over other problem solving methods is that it tries to involve everyone concerned. It can guarantee that whatever decision is reached, it bears everyone’s approval, because everyone’s opinion is duly considered in the process.

That said, even deliberation cannot guarantee that it will find perfect solutions to complex societal problems – partly because some of these have no solution at all.

Since the 1960’s, such insoluble problems have been labelled ‘wicked’.

They involve a great deal of complexity and uncertainty.

“Wicked problems are often too complex to be fully understood by a single person. Unlike a clear-cut math problem, they are perceived in different ways by

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different people, which means that the proposed solutions will be different, and conflicting, too,” explains Raisio.

Such problems are often tied to the personal values and preferences of individuals. For example, one might claim that, for good reasons, health care deserves more resources from the national budget than education. But others might cite equally good reasons supporting an opposing view. Whatever decision is made about the budget, it is not going to satisfy everyone equally, and in this sense, no decision is going to be the right one.

But decisions still have to be made. So, instead of finding the right solution, we just have to look for the best solution that is available.

One way of doing so is by deliberating – and Raisio’s and Ollila’s project might just tell us exactly how best to go about it.

for the people From fatty waste material to the heat of the pavement – Finland’s decentralised energy network of the future relies on surprising sources.

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ow to satisfy our increasing need of energy with decreasing reserves of fossil fuel? What alternative sources could we use? How to produce energy in environmentally friendly ways?” Such questions are already relevant today, and in all likelihood, they will be posed more and more often in the future. The University of Vaasa, as part of the Vaasa Energy Institute (VEI), has been looking for possible answers – and found quite a few of them.

VEI is the cooperation forum of three local higher education institutions – the other two being the Vaasa University of Applied Sciences, and the Novia University of Applied Sciences. As the name suggests, the Institute is mostly interested in the research of alternative and renewable energy sources and distributed energy production.

One of its priorities is the study of biofuels – fuels produced from vegetable oils or animal fats – and of low emission engines.

May contain nuts!

Nuts and seeds are ideal candidates for biofuel raw material, because they are extremely rich in vegetable oil. This oil can be processed into biofuel that can be used just like conventional diesel oil.

Animal fats are suitable too. But this doesn’t mean that you will be able to fill your car up with, say, fish fuel anytime soon. The wide distribution of biofuel would require that it is manufactured on an industrial scale, which would pose an array of practical, as well as ethical, problems. Instead, research is focused on its industrial use.

“The wastes of animal processing facilities often contain fat, which then can be collected and turned into fuel.

This fuel can then power the machines of the facilities,” explains professor Seppo Niemi from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation.

Ideally, a given factory could in this way become self-sufficient in energy. For instance, a poultry processing plant could power its own machines by fatty waste material. Having put the idea into practice,

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a handful of Finnish farms and smaller factories are already gaining energy from the biofuel they themselves produce.

The research group lead by Niemi is seeking ways to improve the efficiency of engines (used e.g. in ships and in power plants, as well as in other industrial environments), and to lower the harmful emission of fuels that power them.

According to the group’s research, biofuel might not only be a convenient, but also a clean replacement of diesel oil – although there are so many different kinds of biofuel that hardly any generalization stands.

“So much can be said that biofuels tend to be cleaner than fossil fuel – insofar as their hydrocarbon and smoke emission tends to be lower,” says Niemi.

Renewable sources Self-sufficient farms and factories have already become reality. VEI itself has completed a project at Söderfjärden, a meteor impact crater near Vaasa, where all facilities of the tourist exhibition centre are powered solely by energy produced on site.

Erkki Hiltunen, director of VEI.

Professor Seppo Niemi from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation.

Hiltunen and Niemi pictured by Sami Seppänen.

Energy self-sufficiency is an important part of the Institutes’s plans of developing a decentralised, secondary market of energy in Finland. This market would consist of smaller, local networks, where power is produced and consumed locally without depending on the country’s energy supplier giants. Importantly, it would in part rely on alternative, renewable and environmentally friendly power sources, such as forest harvesting residues, straw, and biological waste – to name but a few.

“Research shows that there is a huge potential in renewable energy sources,” says Erkki Hiltunen, director of VEI. “Even without taking wind, solar and geothermal energy into consideration, the whole region of Ostrobothnia could cover more than half of its power needs from such sources,” he adds.

Wind turbines and biogas plants are already important contributors to Finland’s energy production. Geothermal energy – power produced from the heat stored in the earth’s crust – is slowly gaining wider recognition. Although, it involves larger technological hurdles,

such as extracting heat from layers of rock. But in 2008, the Vaasa Housing Fair showcased the first ever house powered entirely by the geothermal energy of underwater sediment. The technology used is expected to have a huge potential in the land of thousand lakes.

Into the future According to Hiltunen, one research project of VEI studies the possibility of harnessing the heat stored in large asphalt surfaces – such as parking lots of shopping malls. And yet another project deals with the subject of “smart houses”.

“A smart house is a building equipped with sensors and control systems to monitor and optimise the use of energy.

The goal of these systems is to keep the energy consumption level at a constant

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rate,” says Hiltunen. “If the consumption curves are flattened out, energy costs are lowered, because the excessive consumption in the peak periods is avoided.”

The Institute has also been active in publishing and educating about research results, and it is also seeking new ways to organize nationwide projects, involving both private companies and other universities.

“The cooperation between members of VEI is close, but by no means exclusive,” affirms Hiltunen. “For instance, our biofuel project involves the Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences too. Their school of agriculture grows biofuel crops. We process their oil at the University’s facilities, and test the biofuel at the engine labs of Novia,” he explains.

VEI has so far only served as an inhouse cooperation forum of its members, but, according to Hiltunen, it is likely to develop into a full-fledged, more independent organisation in the near future.

Sea change As market forces make their way to higher education, quality is the key to success.

Total number and ratio of international degree students (% of the total number of students) 2006

2007

2008

2009

162 (3.2%)

226 (4.5%)

255 (5.8%)

281 (6.2%)

Total number of incoming exchange students 2006

2007

2008

2009

186

206

220

233

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he landscape of higher education is changing in Finland. In line with current global trends, market forces are making themselves felt ever more obviously.

Higher education has traditionally been free of charge for Finns and foreigners alike. But new laws, introduced in 2010, made it possible for Finnish universities to charge tuition fees from masters’ students coming from outside Europe.

“In 2010, a four-year test period started, based on a framework developed by the Ministry of Education and Culture,” says Francesca Cucinotta, Head of International Relations of the University.

“In this period, universities were given free hands to experiment with different tuition fee and scholarship models for their master’s programmes,” she adds.

“Internationalisation is an important element of the University’s strategy,” stresses Cucinotta. “We hope to attract ever more international students. The ageing society of Finland, much like those of other European countries, is in increasing need of talented and skilled builders of the future,” she adds.

The key to achieving this objective is to focus on improving the quality of education – which is another strategic aim of the University.

“There is only one way to be successful on the education market in the long run, and that is by providing a service of guaranteed and high standards,” says Cucinotta. “We are looking into taking advantage of the different options the market opens up for us. But our basic strategy is very simple. Our aim is to offer quality that is worth paying for!”

The stakes are high The introduction of fees, despite being compensated with a scholarship scheme, might lead to a drop in international applications. But the University is determined to continue the trend of past years, which saw a constant increase in the number of foreign degree students.

An exchange of ideas The number of foreigners studying their degrees at the University of Vaasa has been increasing steadily. In the 2009/2010 academic year, the share of international degree students was about 6%, but from the degrees awarded that very same year

by the university, 17% was received by foreigners. The total share of international students at the university – including exchange students – has reached 12%, surpassing earlier hopes and predictions.

“Student exchange in general is very popular. And in particular, Erasmus, the grant programme for exchange within the EU has been the success story of the European Commission,” claims Cucinotta.

That said, there is still a lot more room to grow – which is why the University is seeking to deepen its cooperation with its 300 partners in 40 different countries.

It is aiming at establishing strategic partnerships especially in its fields of focus: multiculturalism, organizational management, corporate finance and distributed energy systems.

“Going on a student exchange period should not increase the time it takes to complete a degree,” emphasizes Cucinotta.

“Ideally, universities should fully accept studies completed at their international partners with matching programmes, so that the exchange is truly beneficial for everyone involved. This is the goal we are working towards,” she concludes.

Master’s Degree Programmes (120 ECTS) 2010-2011 International Business The EPAS-accredited, two-year programme is built around three key aspects of international business in a cross-cultural context: international strategic management, international marketing management, and international HR management. The programme also offers a range of countryfocused studies, preparing students for doing business in key emerging markets.

Finance This programme approaches the theory of finance and financial analysis from an international perspective. It provides and

overview of corporate finance, investment and option pricing theory – as well as excellent career prospects for graduates worldwide.

Intercultural Studies in Communication and Administration This interdisciplinary, research-oriented programme focuses on questions of identity and cultural differences, and their implications on people’s behaviour, ways of thinking and organised interaction. The programme offers specializations in the field of humanities and in the field of administrative sciences.

Telecommunication Engineering The main focus of the programme is on wireless and mobile communication. It also covers the areas of telecommunication architecture evolution, digital communication and radio technology.

Industrial Management Students in this interdisciplinary programme will understand and master the basics of technology management. They will learn how to analyse the future of technologies, policies and markets, and to establish and manage research and development projects.

More information on our Master’s Degree Programmes: www.masteryourstudies.fi

Studies in English for exchange students In addition to language courses in Finnish and Swedish, the following courses have generally been available for exchange students:

Bachelor’s level courses

Master’s level courses

• • • •

•

• • • •

Scandinavian Business Studies (20 ECTS) East-West Business Studies (33 ECTS) European Affairs (20 ECTS) Modern Economics and Economic Thinking (25 ECTS) Public Management (26 ECTS) Multimedia Authoring Systems (25 ECTS) Intercultural Studies (25 ECTS) Computer Science (25 ECTS)

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• • • •

International Business Studies (20 ECTS) Finance Studies (30 ECTS) Industrial Management (25-50 ECTS) Telecommunication Engineering (20-30 ECTS) Public Management (15 ECTS)

Fresh ideas and new perspectives broaden the scope of the International Business Degree Programme.

Beyond differences “ Cross-cultural knowledge in the field of marketing has become extremely important. Many emerging economies, such as China or India, belong to cultures vastly different to those of Western Europe. How would it ever be possible to tap into those markets without being mindful of the cultural differences?”

The question is rhetorical, but probably not everyone understands it so well as Saba Khalid, Ph.D., assistant lecturer at the Department of Marketing. Originally from Pakistan, she’s been living in Finland for more than a decade.

“The differences between Finland and Pakistan are enormous. When I realized it doesn’t make sense to measure things here with Pakistani standards, I got used to living here quite easily,” she says.

Upon her arrival, Khalid didn’t speak Finnish at all, which made finding a job more difficult. The solution came in the form of a doctoral scholarship at the University – a place where being international is hardly a drawback.

“Given my background, my perspective is naturally different to those of Finns. That different perspective alone can be a source of new, fresh ideas,” she says.

Looking at the future As a lecturer, Khalid witnessed the evolution of the International Business degree programme. Today, she sees the programme as comprehensive and interdisciplinary – perhaps more so than most MBAs. “Apart from the core business studies, we focus on the international aspects of management. Hence the inclusion of subjects such as international knowledge management or cross-cultural marketing in the curriculum,” she says, adding that “the administration of international operations is all the time becoming more and more important for companies.”

Some say that economics textbooks, in the light of the latest global financial crisis, will have to be written anew. Khalid, on the other hand, views the situation more coolly.

“Of course textbooks need to be updated all the time,” she explains. “But we already know that crises come and go in cycles. So instead of writing new textbooks from scratch, we should just focus our efforts on understanding what’s behind these cycles,” she concludes.

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Quality assured In 2010, the International Business Degree Programme of the University of Vaasa was awarded the EPAS accreditation by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). This concluded a two-year process or preparation, in the course of which the whole programme was overhauled, and strict quality control methods were introduced in order to meet the EPAS standards.

Larimo pictured

by Sami Seppänen.

“The accreditation serves as a proof of guaranteed quality,” says Jorma Larimo, head of the Department of Marketing and vice-dean of the Faculty of Business Studies.

“And it is the first step towards the EQUIS accreditation for the whole faculty”.

COLUMN

The one-armed nation Finns and technology Coming from Britain to live in Finland some years ago, I noticed one difference at once: in Finland, things work. Showers did not scald me or slow to a trickle; clocks had not all stopped, and the local paper solemnly reported that a public telephone was out of order: in my hometown of Cambridge, “public telephone found working” would have been more newsworthy.

Secondly, the education system: Finland leads most international league tables in technical and science subjects. The United States, for example, lags behind in the key fields of maths, reading and science education.

People with new ideas become public figures: professors appear on the news and a Master’s thesis might well become a news story. And education is lifelong.

At that time too, Finnish life was very devolved: people read the local paper rather than a national one; small towns, often dominated by a local paper mill, could be as dynamic as the huge centres of Helsinki, Tampere and Turku. One such town was the small town of Nokia, where a factory making tyres and rubber boots saw the need to diversify into the new technology.

The Finnish lifestyle seems to be centred on the handyman (and increasingly the handywoman). When spring comes, everyone seems to be up a ladder painting or drilling. Building your own house is still a kind of initiation into manhood for Finnish men, the urban equivalent of clearing the forest. Even with help from neighbours and family members (a unique form of Finnish cooperation called “talkoot”), building your own house requires many different skills: heating, plumbing and insulation can’t be left to chance in the Finnish climate.

Nokia is now one of the most valuable brands in the world. The traditional images of Finland – Sibelius, sauna and the “silent Finn” – have made way for another stereotype, that of a one-armed nation where people have only one usable arm because the other is clamped firmly to their ear, or at least held in front of their face as they gaze at the glowing screen of their N97.

How did it happen? Firstly, Finland is very precise about figures: ages are no secret, and newspapers publish lengthy lists of people’s taxable incomes every year. Finns brother very little about the taste of the beer, but its percentage strength will be widely quoted. The desire for precise information can often go to absurd lengths: recently a newspaper solemnly recorded the percentage of berries and mushrooms that are picked in Finland every year.

“Handyman”, though, is a misleading name in other ways too, because little is in fact done by hand. Finns love machines and gadgets to take the strain of modern life. I enjoy working out of doors and have always sawn and chopped my winter firewood by hand – but I have to fight off kind-hearted neighbours who arrive with a power-saw big enough to fell a Californian redwood – often still shiny from the box it was bought in. It doesn’t matter how small the task is: there is a powerful machine to take care of it.

It is this combinataion of high educational standards and the cultural practices developed in an inhospitable climate that have made Finland one of the most technologically innovative societies on Earth.

The traditional images of Finland – Sibelius, sauna and the “silent Finn” – have made way for another stereotype.

Gerald Porter is Professor of English at the University of Vaasa. He has an MA Honours degree from the University of Oxford and is a docent in the University of Umeå, Sweden.

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VAASA – a city of multitudes Guidebooks are known to be harsh on Vaasa – and unfairly so!

The University photo archive

Houses onshore built for the 2008 Vaasa Housing Fair. Some of the houses use geothermal energy of underwater sediment.

True, the city might not be the destination of choice for tourists looking for historic monuments. But it lies in beautiful surroundings on the coast of the Baltic Sea, and if you happen to live here, you realize that it has more to offer than captivating views of the shore, white summer nights and early afternoon winter sunsets.

With around 110 thousand people living in the city and its region, Vaasa can hardly be described as a metropolis.

But it is spaciously spread out on the archipelago, and its vibrant international atmosphere belies its physical size.

Due to the large share of Swedishspeaking Finns, the city is truly bilingual.

But unofficial statistics estimate that, apart from the country’s official languages (see our article on page 4), around a hundred The pedestrian area in the city center is a nice place for browsing the city life.

18 The University photo archive

UNIVERSITY of VAASA

Svenna Martens

The University campus seen from the opposite waterfront.

The campus is said to be one of the most beautiful in the whole country.

languages are spoken in Vaasa. Many of the foreigners living here are employed by the city’s industries, while the three universities and two polytechnics attract hundreds of foreign students every year, from all over the world.

In 1852, the whole city burnt to ashes. But the blaze only marked a new beginning. Vaasa was rebuilt in a matter of years, and to this day remains a busy, thriving, and truly multinational city.

New energies Tradition, competence and connections – these are the ingredients to the success of the Vaasa region as a hub of the energy technology industry.

“Connections mean, on the one hand, physical connections which make the city a gateway between Sweden and Finland,” explains Raine Vasanoja, senior business advisor of VASEK, the region’s development company. “On the other hand, the business and knowledge networks of the region are just as important,” he adds.

One of these networks is the Vaasa Energy Cluster – an association of more than a hundred local companies, including small and medium size firms as well as global giants like Wärtsilä, producer of engines and power plants and ABB, manufacturer of power grid appliances. The Energy Cluster is crucial for the region’s industry: its companies together employ more than 10 thousand locals.

Seppo Lammi

The picturesque Kvarken Archipelago demonstrates the geological effects of the last ice age.

“The largest share of the Cluster’s steadily growing revenues comes from exports,” says Vasanoja, adding that the most important markets are China and India.

But Vaasa and the region also benefits from the companies’ research and development investments, which largely focus on developing a range of alternative energy sources – such as wind power, geothermal or solar energy.

“Vaasa is the testing ground for new technologies. These often prove that energy production doesn’t need to be dirty,” points out Vasanoja, referring to a large-scale wind farm project just under way. “By 2020, Finland is supposed to produce 20 procent of its consumed electricity by renewable resources – but we’re confident that the region will reach this target years earlier,” he adds.

...and yet it moves!

A few kilometers north of Vaasa lies the Kvarken Archipelago – a beautiful ensemble of small islands, remarkable

19 UNIVERSITY of VAASA

also for the peculiar geological phenomenon it demonstrates. Relieved of the weight of the ice of the last ice age, the land has steadily been rising here, by about 8 mm every year. At the current rate of rise, a permanent stretch of dry land will connect the two coasts of the Gulf of Bothnia in about 2.500 years.

The archipelago has been added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2006. The listing hasn’t yet lead to a boom in tourism, but the development of the area is underway, under considerations that speak volumes about Finns’ respect for nature.

“We are concentrating on careful and sustainable development, both with regard to tourism as well as to the local industry” says Suvi Markko, communications manager of VASEK. “Kvarken is a beautiful region, and it is almost sacred in the eyes of many people. Its development cannot be anything else but environmentally friendly.”

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The University of Vaasa is a multidisciplinary, business-oriented university. Our fields are business studies, public administration, languages and technology.

We offer degrees at all academic levels from Bachelor’s to Doctor’s. Our maritime campus is the modern study environment of approximately 5 000 students.

University of Vaasa P.O. Box 700 FI-65101 Vaasa FINLAND +358 6 324 8111 www.uwasa.fi