New developments in the funding model of finnish universities of applied sciences - a critique
Eskola, Anne; Hundal, Shab; Turpeinen, Jukka (2018)
Eskola, Anne
Hundal, Shab
Turpeinen, Jukka
Mate Ltd, Zagreb, Croatia
2018
Copyright © 2018 Mate Ltd, Zagreb, Croatia
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201902212572
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201902212572
Tiivistelmä
The Finnish higher education system has recently gone through many changes. There is a national government project in Finland aiming at making Finland the most educated nation by year 2020. The program also aims at improving the quality of work life in Finland to make it the best in Europe by year 2020. At the same time, the country has experienced a long financial recession where the state budget money spent in education has been cut. Improving the quality of education and work life at the same time as cutting the financing of education has put the universities of applied sciences as any other institutions of higher education in a situation where they are required to produce results that are more positive and/or better results with less costs. New performance- based higher education funding models where the state allocates funding based on the achievement of predefined objectives have been introduced for both traditional universities and universities of applied sciences. The effect of such funding model is very strong in a country like Finland, because in Finland there are, in general, no higher education tuition fees that higher education institutions could use to finance their operations. However, at the same time with the new funding model, introduction of tuition fees for the incoming students from non-EU/EEA area can be seen depicting a clear divergence from the long tradition for tuition free education in Finland. Admitting that Finnish higher education authorities are still deliberating and developing financial models, nonetheless, we depict, at the conceptual level, the impacts of the recently introduced funding model on the quantitative and qualitative targets of universities of applied sciences and their alignment to larger political targets set by the Finnish government.