3 / 2000
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Tradition and Quality
with an International Focus
Keijo Virtanen The writer is Rector of the University of Turku.
Turku, Finland’s oldest university town, has traditions of education and research going back 700 years. The first students left Turku to study abroad in the late 13th century. However, the founding of the Royal Academy of Turku (Academia Aboensis) in the year 1640 was a decisive step that led to a lively exchange of scholars between Turku and foreign universities. Turku has always been the main gateway to the West and a significant route by which innovations have reached the country, also acting as a link with both western (Stockholm) and eastern (St Petersburg) cultural influences.
Founded in 1920 – the Academy was moved to Helsinki in 1828 – the University of Turku has continued in this tradition of internationalism. Researchers have had their own direct international contacts for decades, in addition to which the university has had bilateral agreements with several foreign universities. The university is also a member of the Coimbra Group.
Student mobility took an organised form in the early 1990s with the advent of exchange programmes such as Nordplus, Socrates and ISEP. Only ten years ago there were a few dozen foreign students at the University of Turku. In 1999 there were some 800, 250 of whom were degree students. The number of students from Turku studying at a foreign university is increasing at the same pace. Of the students of Turku University, four percent are foreign citizens. The Student Union of the University plays an important role in looking after the welfare and well being of foreign students.
The University is continuously increasing the amount of teaching given in English, ranging in scale from individual courses in almost any department up to entire modules and even Master’s and Doctoral degrees. The Finnish Language and Culture programme is custom-designed for international students, and there are other courses which international and Finnish students attend side by side. In post-graduate education, English is the language generally used. All of the University’s departments are now within the European Credit Transfer System.
Several teaching and research units of the University of Turku, which have also gained international recognition, have been selected as centres of excellence in Finland. In teaching, the units and fields selected are, or have been, the Faculty of Medicine, the Department of Biochemistry and Food Chemistry, the History Departments, the Faculty of Law and the Department of Social Policy, and in research, Ecology and Animal Systematics, Biomedical Research (BioCity Turku), and Computer Science (Turku Centre for Computer Science). These units also offer programmes suitable for international students, such as Master’s programmes in Environmental Science and in Biotechnology and, within the Faculty of the Humanities, the Baltic Sea Region Studies MA programme.
Modern technology has also allowed the University of Turku to create a more international profile. In developing various forms of open, flexible and distance learning, the University’s Centre for Extension Studies has done pioneering work in Finland.
For several years, both independently and as a member of the International University of Turku/Åbo consortium, the University of Turku has sought to define its profile by stressing a genuinely international focus in all its activities – in research, teaching and the supporting administrative functions. The University’s own strategic goals are to achieve strength in multidisciplinarity and, through this strength, to meet the global, international and regional challenges of the new millennium.
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