Minister of Education Krista Kiuru has announced that 21.5 million euros cut from Aalto University’s added funding budget will be made available to other universities in the country in early 2015.
Kiuru says the money is intended to contribute to the core funding of the universities and the distribution criteria will be the same as with core funding decisions. Aalto University will now be forced to compete for the additional funding along with the thirteen other Finnish universities.
Aalto University was established in 2010, created by a merger of the Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology and the University of Art and Design Helsinki. Since its founding, it has received additional funding to help develop its operations.
This additional funding was meant to top out at 100 million euros per year in 2012, but now it appears it is destined to remain at the sum of 80 million. Beginning next year, gradual cuts will be made to the university’s added funding quota.
“If we have 14 universities in Finland and as per agreement, 13 have made preparations to compete for a share of the added funding in 2015 to supplement their core funding, then they have the right to expect that this will indeed happen,” says the Education Minister.
“Each of the 14 universities can now bid for this money. Naturally it places them in a more impartial position, because now there is added funding at large that they can each compete for equally,” says Kiuru.
“The government went and made promises it couldn’t afford”
Representatives of Aalto University say they are disappointed that the university will never receive the 100 million per year that the state had originally committed.
Minister Kiuru says that during an economic upswing, the previous government made promises it simply could not afford.
“Our coffers are empty and so it is completely understandable that both the last cabinet and the current one have not found a way to reshuffle money and make that envisioned added funding a reality,” she says.
The Minister’s proposition does not set out to dismantle Aalto’s current added funding scheme with one fell blow.
“Of course we can’t operate under the principle that all of Aalto University’s additional funding must immediately be redistributed among all 14 universities. That would be too big of a change for Aalto at once,” says Kiuru.
Kiuru says the additional funding will be done away with for good in several stages over the coming years, however.
“The goal is to make the whole sum of money available to all the universities eventually,” she says.
The Minister says it will be up to the next government to oversee the final redistribution accordingly.
