Foreigners, pay up!
Kuva: Sami Seppänen
Starting in 2011, non-European master’s students will probably have to pay for their degrees at the uni of Vaasa. Higher education is set to become an export service in Finland – but uncertainty clouds the future.
This much is sure - but little else is known about how tuition fee schemes will be implemented. The university law avoids going into details: for example, it doesn't stipulate how high the fees should be, or how the scholarships should work. Universities themselves have to decide upon such technicalities.
"We are at the beginning of a four-year pilot period, a test run of sorts, in which universities across Finland will try different measures," says Francesca Cucinotta, Head of International Relations at the University of Vaasa.
Some institutions will start charging for their degree programmes already from this coming autumn semester - but not our university.
"The faculties of the University of Vaasa are currently discussing which programmes will become fee-paying, and how much we would charge for them. Based on these discussions, the board of the University is going to make the final decision this August. The first fee-paying students will start their studies in the autumn of 2011," Cucinotta says.
In her estimation, the amount of the fee will initially be in the range of 4,000 - 5,000 € per academic year, adjusted later if necessary.
Market forces
"It is essentially the market that will put a price tag on our programmes," Cucinotta says, noting that the average total cost of a master's degree is roughly 10,000 €.
"The idea is not to get rich from these fees, but rather to gain additional sources to develop the degree programmes," she comments.
But there are risks involved. Currently, a vital source of income for universities is the state support they receive after each student who successfully graduates. International students tend to be especially important from a financial point of view, because a larger proportion of them tends to graduate following the programmes' original schedule. Once degree programmes become fee-paying, the number of foreign students is likely to drop - one question is whether the income from the tuition fees will compensate for this.
On the other hand, applicants looking for free higher education are slowly but steadily running out of options. Finland is one of the last countries to introduce tuition fees, following suit with Denmark, which introduced them in 2006, and Sweden, that is currently doing so.
The grant system, which universities by law must introduce together with the tuition fees, makes it even harder to predict the outcome of the measure.
"Details of our system are being discussed. But it is most likely that we will tie scholarships to the students' academic results, for instance in such a way that the best performing students will get a waiver from the fee," says Cucinotta.
Brains for sale
The basic idea underlying tuition fees for non-EEA students in Finland is to make higher education an attractive export service. Cucinotta cites the example of Australia, where higher education services are the third most important source of export revenues - and where these revenues, on the national level, could in theory cover the free education of all Australian students. (Although higher education isn't free for them either.)
The introduction of a more product-oriented view of higher education is a sign that the government has opened the doors towards charging tuition fee from Finnish students too (see textbox). However, this is unlikely to happen in the near future - at least until the effects of the introduction of tuition fees are clarified.
"Some think that ‘free' means ‘of low quality', so from that point of view a fee-paying tertiary education would be better. In addition, fees are arguably good incentives: if you have to pay for every year you study, you are bound to finish quicker," points out Cucinotta.
"But of course the situation is much more complicated than this: for another thing, tuition fees might affect our whole concept of teaching. Finnish universities encourage independent studying, and try to create a learning environment that motivates it. But if programmes become fee-paying, then students might expect more contact teaching from the teachers, as some kind of justification for the fees. This might lead to an increase in contact teaching hours, a corresponding decline in research work, and more ‘school-like', 9-to-5 universities."
If you are reading this, chances are that the introduction of tuition fees won't affect you directly or personally (the planned fee will only concern those non-European students who start their master's degree in the autumn of 2011). But the long-term effects will be, in no doubt, felt by you too. If higher education is society's investment for the future, let's hope that the returns will be worth the risks.
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