Yesterday, we celebrated the 106th anniversary of the University of Turku, which was founded on Kalevala Day in 1920. Its creation was the achievement of a people who cherished education. Education is widely present and prominent this year as we celebrate the 750th anniversary of the Turku Cathedral Chapter and Cathedral School in Turku. The early academic roots of the University of Turku, the city of Turku, and entire Finland are strongly intertwined with our shared history, and we join with particular joy in celebrating the 750 years of education, culture, and public administration.
At our Anniversary Celebration, I had the opportunity to tell a large crowd of University’s friends and stakeholders as well as staff and students that the outlook of the University of Turku is very positive. Last year was a record year for us in many ways. For example, the amount of supplementary funding we received was higher than ever, as was the number of completed degrees. In last autumn’s workplace well-being survey, we were among the top three of Finnish universities for the first time, and student well-being also seems to be developing positively. We do not chase records just for the sake of achieving records, but we invest in well-being, for example, to make the University of Turku the best possible place where to study and work.
A strong foundation is important because it is the basis from which we build our future. We are currently building the University of Turku for the 2030s. We live in complex times, and we must constantly consider what are the best tools for building our future.
Many of our most important issues relate to the field of education in Finland. We are fully committed to increasing the proportion of university graduates working in Finland. How can we achieve this in a society under pressure to find savings and where age groups are shrinking? We know that competition for students will become increasingly fierce in the coming years. The University of Turku is attractive, but how can we ensure that it remains so? How can we respond to the needs of young people and their future employers?
At the University of Turku, we are currently initiating the curricula planning for 2027–2030. This is an exceptionally important tool for us at this moment. We need to be able to identify what kind of expertise will be needed in the coming decades and how we will equip the future experts who graduate from our University.
We want to emphasise a broad approach. We want to educate experts who not only possess up-to-date knowledge based on research, but above all have the ability to maintain and update their own competence and knowledge.
This means that our degrees must enable the broad approach even further: there must be flexibility within the degrees to take advantage of the true multidisciplinary nature of our University. The range of disciplines across our eight faculties is so vast that students can build a very interesting combination for themselves. We also mustn't forget the expertise of the other higher education institutions in Turku, to which we are building ever better bridges.
Perspectives must be broad, as complexity must be viewed from a distance. We must update our understanding of learning, but also preserve what we have already built, such as strengthening the skills needed in professional life through internships.
Curricula planning is not just an internal process at the University. We invite our stakeholders to join us in ensuring that the University of Turku provides education that meets the needs of both current and, in particular, future students, employers in the region and across Finland, and the academic world.
We pledge to be proactive in the face of great changes and to work continuously not only to identify opportunities and threats, but also to anticipate them. We hope that our partners will be strongly involved, even challenging us to consider what kind of experts the coming decades will need. Let's stay in touch, because the future is built together — and it is built now.
The writer is the Rector of the University of Turku.
