International comparison of engineering education.

InternatIonal comparIson of engIneerIng educatIon

Timo Ala-Vähälä

Overview of engineering education and degrees in Finland

Publisher: Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland – TEK and the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries

Layout and design: Vanto Design

Publishing: Eugramen, Helsinki, June 2013

ISBN: 978-952-5998-36-8, 978-952-5998-37-5 (PDF)

The Finnish higher education system has two parallel sectors: uni-versities and universities of applied sciences (or AMK institutions). Universities concentrate on academic and scientific research and education whereas universities of applied sciences are more ori-ented to working life and respond to labour market needs. Their task is also to conduct R&D which supports instruction and pro-motes regional development.1

Finland has 16 universities and 25 universities of applied sci-ences. Engineering education is provided in 7 universities and in 15 universities of applied sciences. Finland is signatory of the Bo-logna process and engineering degrees in both sectors are struc-tured into two cycles.

In universities the bachelor’s degree is a 3-year degree (180 ECTS), followed by a 2-year master’s degree (120 ECTS). The ti-

tle after master’s studies is Master of Science (Technology) and students are expected to complete their master’s degree. Univer-sities also offer two postgraduate degrees: Licentiate of Science (Technology) and Doctor of Science (Technology). Most of the postgraduate students take the doctoral degree without com-pleting the licentiate degree.

In universities of applied sciences, the bachelor’s degree is a 4-year degree (240 ECTS) which is also the degree students are expected to graduate with. The title upon graduation is Bachelor of Engineering. After 3 years of working experience, students can apply for the master’s program which is a part-time 18-month program (60 ECTS) resulting in the Master of Engineering degree.

1 Finnish National Board of Education, www.oph.fi

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Summary of the key findings

This summary recapitulates ten of the most pivotal findings in this report:

• Finnish universities of technology have a lower share of budgeted funding and higher share of competed research funding than most of the foreign universities examined in this report.

• The absolute financial volume has grown more slowly in Finnish universities of technology than in the comparison universities abroad.

• With the exception of Aalto University and Åbo Akademi University, the funding allocated to Finnish universities of technology per student and compared to student flow is lower than in all the other universities within the study, ex-cept for the Russian Tomsk University.

• Also in Aalto University and Åbo Akademi University, the funding per student is clearly lower than in the Swiss ETH and Danish DTU. At ETH, the funding per student is more than twice as much as at Aalto.

• With the exception of the University of Vaasa, the total funding of Finnish universities of technology compared to academic staff is lower than in all the foreign universities within the analysis.

• The number of academic faculty compared to the number of students is relatively good in Finnish universities of tech-nology. The analysis was, however, challenged by the fact that teaching and research staff could not be separated in the study.

• Educational development has in the recent years been mostly influenced by external pressures such as the Bologna process and the resourcing model steering universities’ per-formance. Several renewals have been underway simultane-ously. Also minor-scale pedagogic development has been pursued on the side.

• Variation in contact teaching is large on both the bachelor’s level and the master’s level in Finnish universities providing engineering education. This analysis calls for further study of how this impacts learning outcomes and study progress.

• The interface between Finnish universities and the econom-ic life hosts a rich variety of different forms of cooperation. A considerable part of learning and engineering identity build-up takes place at the workplace or on the job, typically in a company. Collaboration in research and product develop-ment is relatively extensive.

• This case study does not allow analyzing to what extent the university-industry collaboration is strategic by nature and supports the key long-term goals of the university and its partner companies, and what types of operating modes could more effectively support the renewal of economic life and society. This calls for further investigation.

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Prologue

In Finland, there is a strong intent presently to develop our innova-tion environment into the best of its kind with an all-embracing innovation policy. High technological expertise is a prerequisite for securing an attractive innovation environment and competi-tive economy. In practice this necessitates strong investment in and continuous development and sufficient resourcing of engi-neering education and research. The implementation of effective development measures requires understanding and knowledge of the current status of engineering education.

Relatively recent information is available about the challenges related to the content, organization and assessment of higher university education in the changing operating environment and labor market. Contrastively, sufficient research knowledge is unavailable about the level of funding and human resources in Finnish engineering education as compared to our rival countries.

The acquisition of reliable comparative data regarding the resourcing of engineering education is challenging, owing e.g. to the differing education systems and methods of collecting statis-tics. And yet we decided to take on the challenge, while openly discussing the limitations of our comparison. Primarily, the study aimed to investigate the resourcing of Finnish higher education institutions compared to corresponding institutions abroad. As the point of comparison we selected universities that hold a strong position in the market according to different comparisons and classifications. In addition to the international comparison, the study briefly monitored the current status, challenges and op-portunities related to education supply and university-industry collaboration in Finland.

The Finnish institutions in the comparison include all the universities of technology: Aalto University, Tampere University of Technology, Lappeenranta University of Technology, the Univer-

sity of Oulu, the University of Turku, the University of Vaasa, and Åbo Akademi University. The universities selected from abroad comprise California Institute of Technology (the US), Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Denmark), Eidgenössische Technische Hoch-schule (Switzerland), Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Sweden), Nan-yang Technological University (Singapore), Technische Universität Munchen (Germany) and National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University (Russia).

The study was coordinated by Academic Engineers and Ar-chitects in Finland – TEK and the Federation of Finnish Technol-ogy Industries. Funding and participation through steering group activities was provided by Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM), Aalto University, Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), Tampere University of Technology (TUT) and the Univer-sity of Oulu (OY). The steering group members included Jai Joki-nen (Aalto), Jorma Karhu (OKM), Johanna Naukkarinen (LUT), Juha Liinavuori (TUT), Helka-Liisa Hentilä (OY), Juhani Nokela (TEK, steering group secretary), Mervi Karikorpi (the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries, steering group vice chairman), and Kati Korhonen-Yrjänheikki (TEK, steering group chairman).

The study was conducted by the Research Institute of Edu-cational Research at the University of Jyväskylä. Timo Ala-Vähälä acted as the researcher in charge and Jussi Välimaa as the Director. We thank the Research Institute for the high-quality study and fruitful collaboration. We sincerely thank also all the university and corporate participants in our interviews and surveys for your insightful contributions to our central themes. We hope the find-ings of our analysis benefit the development of universities pro-viding engineering education in Finland and the decision-making impacting university resourcing on the national level.

Helsinki, April 24, 2013 On behalf of the research steering group,

Kati Korhonen-Yrjänheikki Mervi KarikorpiAcademic Engineeers and Architects in Finland – TEK the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries

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CONTENT

1. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

1.1 Aim of the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

1.2 Universities selected for the study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4

1.3 Concepts used in the report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

1.3.1 Resourcing and funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

1.3.2 Student number and student flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6

1.3.3 University organization boundaries, jurisdiction and interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1.4 Key sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

2. FUNDING OF UNIVERSITY OPERATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

2.1 Methodological problems and choices related to the comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

2.2 Essential sources of financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.3 Funding compared to student number and flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.3.1 Trends in student number and flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.3.2 Financing compared to student number . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.4 Resources and sources of financing – preliminary summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3. RESOURCES AND TEACHING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

3.1 Financing compared to the number of academic faculty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

3.2 Resources compared to the number of professors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

3.3 Amount of contact teaching within degree programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

3.4 Summary of teaching resources and implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25

4. PEDAGOGIC DEVELOPMENT, QUALITY ASSURANCE,

AND NOVEL TEACHING PRACTICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

4.1 Government initiatives on pedagogic development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.2 Development efforts taken by universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.3 Education feedback mechanisms and teachers’ pedagogic training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29

4.4 The newest new in teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

4.4 Summary of pedagogic development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

5. UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY INTERFACE, CO-EXISTENCE AND COLLABORATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

5.1 Strategic partnerships of universities and corporations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

5.2 Cooperation related to career services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5.3 Teaching-related endeavors at the university-industry interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5.4 University-industry collaboration from the corporate perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34

5.4.1 Organization of cooperation with universities within the companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34

5.4.2 The most important forms of university cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

5.5 Activity of universities and companies at the common interface – preliminary summary . . . . . . . . . . 35

6. CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

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1. Introduction

1.1 aIm of the study

This study examines the following aspects of universities or other institutions providing engineering education: operational fund-ing, funding allocated to teaching, activities related to pedagogic development, and university-industry collaboration related to education. University funding is treated as a whole but the primary aim is to obtain background information about the educational conditions. Research or invoiced service activities hosted by universities fall beyond the scope of this study, even though the study also presents unspecified statistics covering all university activities.

The study in question is no statistically reliable evaluation of the position of the Finnish education system internationally but rather, it aims to investigate its resourcing compared to such universities of technology abroad that hold a strong international position according to different surveys and classifications.

1.2 unIversItIes selected for the study

Seven Finnish and seven foreign universities were selected for this study. The Finnish institutions include all the institutions provid-ing master of science degrees for engineers and architects: Aalto University (Helsinki University of Technology until 2009), Lap-peenranta University of Technology (LUT), the University of Oulu (OU), Tampere University of Technology (TUT), the University of Turku, the University of Vaasa, and Åbo Akademi University (ÅA).

The universities selected from abroad are listed in Table 1. The aim is to include internationally recognized universities from dif-ferent parts of the world, that is, Europe, North America and Asia.

Two Finnish universities, Helsinki University of Technology (before Aalto) and Tampere University of Technology are treated as entities whereas all the other universities are only examined in terms of the engineering education they offer. This is possible as their funding and resources have been separated per scientific field in the Kota and Vipunen databases. Limiting focus to engi-neering education is justified also as its proportion of the entire

Table 1. The foreign universiTies under scruTiny .

University Location Abbreviation

Califormia Institute of Tecnology

USA, California Caltech, Pasadena

Danmarks Tekniske Universitet

Denmark DTU, Copenhagen1

Eidgenössische Tecnische Hocschule

Switzerland ETH, Zürich

Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan

Sweden KTH, Stockholm

Nanyang Technological University

Singapore NTU, Singapore

Technische Universität München

Germany, Bavaria TU München

National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University

Russia, Tomsk oblast TPU, Tomsk

university activities is so small in some Finnish universities (Turku, Vaasa) that examination of entire universities would provide mis-leading information about resourcing.

Foreign universities as treated as entities even when they provide education other than engineering because information regarding engineering education funding cannot be extracted from their financial statements or annual reports. All the selected foreign universities are mainly profiled as universities of technol-ogy but most of them offer studies also in natural sciences and humanities.2

Differences in treatment slightly distort the results: engineer-ing education requires labs and other facilities that increase costs compared to e.g. humanities. As other education has not been excluded from the foreign universities, their resourcing may come across as slightly poorer than in reality compared to Finnish insti-tutions. To minimize this, we included such foreign universities that offer other education to a minor extent.

As mentioned earlier, we only selected universities that hold a recognized position according to international comparisons and that have made information regarding their finances and opera-tions available either as public statistics or otherwise. In practice, we resorted to diverse rankings to select universities operating

1 DTU is, in fact, located in Lyngby in the outskirts of Copenhagen. 2 Educational fields presented in more detail in Table 3.

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in different cultural circles. The report does not take a stand as to how reliably the rankings present the quality of university op-erations. We assume that the listed universities hold a stable and acknowledged position and can therefore be used as points of reference when assessing the level of funding in Finnish universi-ties. Table 2 presents the selected universities’ rankings in a few key listings.

Table 2. foreign universiTies selecTed for The sTudy and Their ranking inTernaTionally .

Leiden, scientific impact 2011/20123

QS World University Rankings 20124

Academic Ranking World Universities (ARWU) 20125

The Times Higher Education univer-sity ranking 20126

Caltech, Pasadena

6 10 6 1

DTU, Copenhagen

45 132 151 - 200 149

ETH, Zürich 18 13 23 12

KTH, Stockholm 262 142 201 - 300 140

NTU, Singapore 166 47 301 - 400 86

TU München 247 53 53 105

TPU, Tomsk - - - -

tained by the Russian Education and Science Ministry among top universities in its field. The Shanghai list (ARWU) had two Finn-ish universities included in 2012: the University of Oulu (among 301-400) and the University of Turku (among 301-400). Aalto University ranked among 401-500 in 2010 but has since then disappeared from the list. In the Leiden list, Aalto performed as the top Finnish university with its 222. place, outperforming KTH Stockholm and TU München.

Table 3 compiles data regarding the judicial position and key educational fields of the foreign universities. Among them, there is only one university with mere engineering emphasis (DTU Copenhagen), other universities offering education in both en-gineering and natural sciences and supportive management and social studies (Caltech and KTH Stockholm), and finally extremely multidisciplinary universities (TU München, NTU Singapore and TPU Tomsk).

Until 2009, all the Finnish universities qualified judicially as state agencies, in other words, they operated as part of the state budget. (Jääskinen & Rantanen 2007, 50 -51) The Universities Act in early 2010 turned universities into independent cost units operating on their own equity capital. Two foundation-based universities started their operations upon the new Act: Aalto University and Tampere University of Technology, while the rest of the universities were categorized as public universities. (Uni-versities Act, 558/2009, 60§; Act on the Implementation of the Universities Act 559/2009.)

At the same time, university-related data collection and publication moved from the Kota database to the Vipunen da-tabase. Their data are not entirely commensurate because the ju-dicial role of universities and methods of data collection changed, as well. The extent to which this impacts data reliability will be analyzed later.

3 Leiden Ranking. http://www.leidenranking.com/ranking.aspx.4 QS Top Universities. http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings.5 Academic ranking of World Universities. http://www.arwu.org/index.jsp.6 Times Higer Education University rankings. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/.7 For more about the rankings listed above, see Rauhvergers 2011.8 Source: http://tpu.ru/en/about/figures/ranking/. (Acquired 15.10.2012.)

The rankings resorted to in this study are based largely on scientific merits. However, each list has been drawn by accen-tuating different emphases, which explains why the university rankings differ.

The Californian Caltech and Swiss ETH Zürich rank high on all the lists but the scores of other universities differ. TPU Tomsk did not fit in at all but in 2010 it ranked second on a list main-

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1.3 concepts used In the report

1.3.1 Resourcing and funding

Funding refers to financial assets or corresponding benefits as-signed for each examination year as announced in financial re-cords. Donations are considered to the extent they have been accounted to the university. Resultatively, funding collected e.g. through separate foundations are not included in the calculations, only accounted assets.

Even though the present study is focused on the funding of education, the purpose is not to claim that funding be the sole resource of education and research. Also other factors contribute to the prerequisites of studying and researching, most essentially probably the level of aptitude and motivation of the students and academic faculty that the university manages to recruit. On the other hand, the university’s ability to collaborate with other research and education institutions and companies also plays a role. For recruitment, the reputation of the university and its educational fields as a workplace and a study community as well as expectations for the university impact on the student’s

or researcher’s later career are also decisive. However, this theme has been left outside the scope of this study. The fifth chapter examines in more detail the collaboration between universities and industry.

Funding and human resources are grouped together in this study, without separating education and research. Further argu-mentation is provided in the chapters that treat these themes but in general, it was not possible in this context to separate the two in a commensurate way, which explains why total resourc-ing is examined instead.

1.3.2 Student number and student flow

Two perspectives come in handy when comparing university funding and human resources with the workload induced by stu-dents: the amount of funding and human resources is examined in relation to both student number and student flow.

The number of students refers to the amount of students registered as bachelor’s or master’s degree students. Doctoral stu-dents are somewhat problematic; in universities such as Caltech

Table 3. daTa sheeT on The selecTed foreign universiTies .

Judicial position Educational fields in fall 2012

Caltech9

PasadenaPrivate non-profit organization. Publishes financial statements.

Biology, chemistry and chemical technology, engineering sciences and applied sciences, geological sciences and planetery sciences, humanities and social sciences, physics, mathematics and astronomy

DTU, Copenhagen

State-funded independent university. Publishes financial statements.10

Engineering sciences

ETH Zürich Federal university of technology. 11 Publishes itemized expenses but not financial state-ments.

Architecture and construction sciences, engineering sciences, natural sciences and mathematics, systemic sciences, management and social sciences

KTH Stockholm State university, publishes financial statements. Architecture, engineering education, management and communications

NTU, Singapore Non-profit organization. Publishes financial statements.

College-level studies in engineering sciences, humanities, arts and social sciences, medicine

TU München State University (Bavaria), publishes financial figures but not financial statements.12

Faculties: natural sciences, engineering sciences, medicine and sport and health sciences, education sciences and economics

TPU Tomsk National research university.13

No public financial records. Data collected and published by professor Victor Pushnykh.

Education units: Institute of natural resources; Institute of Power Engineering; Institute of High Technology Physics; Institute of Cybernetics; Institute of Non-Destructive Testing; Institute of Physics and Technology; Institute of International Education and Language Communication; Institute of Engineering Entrepreneurship; Institute of Lifelong Learning; Economics and Manage-ment Faculty; Faculty of Humanities; Physical Training Faculty

9 Caltech, Financial statement 2011. Student figures include also doctoral students.10 Universitetslov 2§.11 Bundesgesetz über die Eidgenössischen Technischen Hochschulen vom 4. Oktober 1991.12 Bayerisches Hochschulgesetz vom 23. Mai 200613 A status granted by the Russian Ministry of Education and Culture for a ten-year period at a time. http://eng.mon.gov.ru/pro/ved/niu/. (Acquired 12.11.2012.)

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and NTU Singapore they are regarded as student mass insepara-ble from student statistics. At DTU in Copenhagen their status is similar to employed researchers. Placing doctoral students in both categories poses risks when comparing the numbers of academic faculty. In this study we solved the problem by excluding them from student numbers. On the other hand, they have also been excluded from academic faulty in cases where they have been labeled as “doctoral students”.

Student flow refers to the numbers of students starting and completing their studies on different levels. This report applies, in particular, the concept of “average student flow”, which presents the average of students having started their bachelor’s studies and having completed their master’s and post-graduate degrees. Bachelor-level degrees have been excluded from the calculations as some of the universities within the study adopted the bachelor’s degree only during the examination period and their inclusion would distort data about student flow volumes.

Considering both student numbers and student flows in parallel may enhance the reliability of the present study results. Information about students registered and those studying actively in the Finnish universities can be found in the Kota and Vipunen databases 14. This study resorted to the latter figures, that is, active students. Other universities have made available corresponding information about their full-time students. These calculations may, however, not be commensurate. When comparing universities’ resources from two independent angles, they can be contrasted and the reliability of the resulting observations be assessed.

The methods of investigation may also compensate for any faults in the other methods. If universities operate with equal ef-ficacy, one can assume that in the long run the comparison of these two criteria presents the resource situation in a similar way. In the short run, the situation may prove to be different: in prin-ciple students could speed up their graduation, which would de-crease the total number of students but increase student flow. In this situation, the indicator related to student number shows that teacher workload has declined whereas the flow-related indica-tor would demonstrate that the work accomplished by teachers leading to degrees has increased. In a similar vein, delayed studies deteriorate the resource situation in relation to student mass but

when contrasted to student flow, they would not necessarily sig-nify an increase proportionate to delayed studies. As the chapters below reveal, these two indicators commonly yield similar results and thereby supplement each other.

The student numbers include bachelor’s- and master’s-level students; student flow calculations also include doctoral students. As mentioned above, student numbers do not include post-graduate students as (their level of activity and) the method of recording their numbers vary between universities. Doctoral stud-ies, however, are naturally included in student flow. This makes the calculation more realistic especially in terms of professor workload as they most likely carry the main responsibility for supervising theses and post-graduate studies.

One also needs to emphasize that the student flow indica-tor symbolizes the work or workload of the university: how many new students enter and continue with their studies or move on to working life. As the figure also includes those beginning their stud-ies, it does not measure pure productivity. In practice this means that according to student flow, more work is accomplished in Finnish universities than in foreign ones. Before the introduction of the bachelor’s degree in Finland, some of the work remained invis-ible, thanks to students dropping out before degree completion.

1.3.3 University organization boundaries, jurisdiction and interfaces

In this report, a foreign university organization refers to an or-ganization that releases financial statements. If no financial state-ments are published, we examine units that publish financial data in some form. In practice the selected approach means that income from foundations established for fund raising do not show in the calculations presented here. As to domestic multi-disciplinary universities, we examine education directed to engi-neers and architects.

We deviate from the cost unit approach presented above for Caltech as it incorporates cash flow from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory research unit traversing the university into its finan-cial statements. The related funding derives from a research unit funded by NASA and is partly channeled through the university,

14 Calculations are made as follows in the Kota database: FTE 0: absent students; FTE 0.5: present, students who began their bachelor’s or master’s degree before the statistics year and who earned less than 30 credits in the previous academic year (in 2003-04 less than 20 credits). Licensiate, doctoral and other degree students pre-sent; FTE 1: present, students who began their bachelor’s or master’s degree before the statistics year and who earned 30 credits or more in the previous academic year (in 2003-04 20 credits or more). New students who began their bachelor’s or master’s studies in the statistics year. Source: Kota-online (14.10.2012).

https://kotaplus.csc.fi/online/Help.do?topic=opiskelijat.

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15 National center for education statistics (http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/.)16 http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/.17 http://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/college-profiles.

which means the university accounts the related resources in full directly to the unit. However, the received funding is excluded from the university funding in the national database storing in-formation about U.S. university operations.15 The inclusion of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory research unit would triple the funding collected by the university, which is exceptionally high already at its current level.

Jurisdiction in this report refers to the field or sphere in which the university, company or other institution exercises its power. University jurisdiction addresses e.g. decision-making regarding its resources and degree acceptance. Companies decide correspond-ingly upon their operational implementation.

Interface operations (or operations extending beyond the interface) refer to studies extending one way or the other to the jurisdiction of several operators. E.g. in internships students work for a company, accomplish tasks assigned to him or her but still the university decides whether they recognize the training as de-gree-fulfilling credits. The concept of “interface” will be resorted to in the last two chapters that examine curriculum development efforts and university-industry collaboration.

1.4 Key sources

The key sources of this report consist of annual reports, financial statements and public databases for university operations, such as Kota and Vipunen, and the national education statistics in the U.S.16, as well as the public database for engineering education maintained by American Society for Engineering Education17. Moreover, we relied on university study guides and online course descriptions. Further, a researcher visited two universities, the Dan-ish Danske Tekniske Universitet (DTU) and Swiss Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH).

Three corporate members responsible for university-industry collaboration at Fortum, Kone and Nokia were asked to participate in a survey assessing the volume and nature of the collaboration. (Appendix 1). In addition, all the staff responsible for curriculum development in the Finnish university units were involved in a questionnaire examining the current status of development and teachers’ pedagogic education. (Appendix 2) Furthermore, the Rector of Tampere University of Technology and two professors, one research unit director and one program director were inter-viewed over the phone or email regarding strategic corporate collaboration. (Appendices 3 and 4) Professor Viktor Pushnyuk from Tomsk University communicated their data, after having personally collected them.

9

2.1 methodologIcal problems and choIces related to the comparIson

The central challenge related to the comparison of university funding stems from the fact that universities’ financial figures are not comparable. Universities follow different principles in their operations and the related statistics are not commensurate. In practice this shows in their educational profiles deviating from each other and in universities from different nations including different activities in their finances.

Some of the universities are independent financial units with their own wealth and assets. On top of education and research, they engage in business operations and yield profit or loss on a yearly basis. Some of them are federal or state-owned. Their opera-tions are founded on budgeted funding, competed research fund-ing or income from invoiced service operations, but they have no equity capital, income or loss. Some, such as ETH in Zürich, have properties owned by the bearer at their disposal, the use of which has derived a constructed value on their financial figures.

Another problem relates to the comparison of universities operating in different financial surroundings. The purchasing power of the currencies can differ to a great extent and fluctua-tion in currency may have an impact on the financial figures even without essential changes in the purchasing power of the fund-ing. It is therefore not merely a question of the resourcing level seeming to be too high or low; currency fluctuations may make currency development seem bumpier than it, in fact, is. This is why transforming cash flow into a common comparison currency would not necessarily convey an accurate picture of university funding or of its trends.

A solution cannot be found to the first problem, university heterogeneity, and consequently lack of total commensurability has to be taken into account when comparing funding. The other problem, that related to the comparability of currencies, has been solved by presenting the comparisons as relative to Purchasing

Power Parity (PPP). The calculated figures published by the World Bank were resorted to as sources in these comparisons. 18

Inflation has not been corrected for in the figures but the development of resources calculated on the basis of PPP can be related to the development of PPP of the U.S. dollar, which accord-ing to the applied consumer price index was an annual 2.2% on average in 2006-2011.19 The figures were not adjusted for inflation as one could not estimate whether the new coefficient would add to the calculation accuracy or diminish it. The chosen calculation method distorts the results slightly as the purchasing power of the dollar decreased somewhat during the examination period. This is why the calculation emphasizes the situation at the period end more than at the period beginning and why it may accentu-ate the differences between the universities that grew the most and the least. Since TU München is missing the year 2011 – in other words, the average has been calculated for 2006-2010 – its figures would probably have been higher had the year 2011 been included in the calculations.

The period under scrutiny extended from 2006 to 2011, for which period we calculated the key figure mean, annual devel-opment (%), as well as the average deviation for the percentage describing the trend. The tables presented later in this report illus-trate well how much the indicator figures fluctuate over the years. By building our results on figures that are means from a relatively long period of examination, we can avoid random fluctuation within individual years. In addition, we can estimate the direction of the trend and how bumpy or stable it has been.

Table 4 presents an exemplary volume for funding corrected for currency fluctuation and purchasing power. 20 The differences in the results acquired through these two methods demonstrate that purchasing power, in fact, has an essential impact on the re-sult. As an example, the level of resourcing at the Russian Tomsk university (TPU, Tomsk) increases roughly 75% and the level of financing at the Swiss ETH Zürich decreases roughly 30%.

2. Funding of university operations

18 http://search.worldbank.org/data?qterm=purchasing+power+parity&_topic_exact%5B%5D=Purchasing+power+parity&os=019 U.S. Department Of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C. 20212, Consumer Price Index, All Urban Consumers - (CPI-U), U.S. city average.

All items. ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt. Acquired 11.12.2012.20 Mean annual currency. Source: World Bank and the European Central Bank.

10

Table 4. financial volume of universiTy operaTions (million usd) .21

University Funding 2006–2011, averageAnnual change %

2006–2011, average Standard deviation in change % point

M USD M USD PPP22 USD USD PPP USD USD PPP

ETH, Zürich 1215.3 838.6 12.6 % 6.6 % 7.4 2.9

NTU, Singapore 807.7 1,094.7 16.7 % 10.9 % 25.4 17.2

TU München (2006–2010)23 739.5 655.4 10.8 % 10.1 % 5.6 3.5

DTU Copenhagen 592.5 403.5 24.9 % 23.4 % 34.7 31.4

Caltech, Pasadena24 590.2 590.2 23.2 % 23.2 % 60.2 60.2

KTH, Stockholm 477.0 366.6 10.0 % 7.4 % 9.7 7.1

Aalto/TKK 307.2 269.3 9.2 % 7.0 % 5.3 3.2

TTY, Tampere 159.2 125.0 9.4 % 7.2 % 5.6 4.2

TPU, Tomsk 130.8 230.4 18.6 % 10.5 % 22.5 10.6

Oulu Univ, tech 71.5 56.2 10.5 % 8.5 % 6.0 8.9

LUT, tech 63.3 49.8 10.5 % 8.7 % 12.8 15.6

ÅA, tech 25.2 19.8 17.1 % 14.9 % 10.3 11.6

Turku Univ, tech 7.2 5.6 4.3 % 2.2 % 14.5 13.8

Vaasa Univ, tech 5.4 4.2 17.2 % 16.1 % 22.8 27.0

21 The Finnish student and key financial figures are derived from Kota database (2006-2009) and Vipunen database (2010-2011). Vipunen does not offer financial figures; instead, they have been acquired from Chief Inspector Jukka Haapamäki (OKM). Data from foreign universities are based on accounting records publishing in their annual reports, unless otherwise stated. The same sources are also used later when reporting finances and student numbers, unless otherwise specified.

22 PPP = Purchasing Power Parity.23 TUM in Zahlen, in 2006 – 2010.24 The key figures from Caltech do not include cash flow within the NASA-funded Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is a unit the property of which is owned by NASA but

the operative costs of which traverse Caltech. Including Jet Propulsion Laboratory resources in our examination would raise the level of Caltech financing to roughly two billion dollars. The U.S. National Center for Education Statistics announces Caltech resources without the inclusion of the lab.

When examining the table, one should keep in mind that for some universities, there is a difference between the financing collected by the university and spending on research and teach-ing. Especially the income of Caltech varied strongly during the examination period, owing primarily to fluctuation in investment income. The mean operational costs were on a similar level (588 M$) but the level of expenses was considerably lower; on aver-age their expenses grew by 4.8% and the standard deviation of change totaled 2.2%.

Table 5 cross-tabulates the universities according to their economic volume but also to the change in their volumes. The universities have been divided into four groups: the three lowest, the four below the median, the four above the median, and the three highest. The mechanical division causes some inaccuracy but it allows to roughly visualize how the universities are posi-tioned in relation to each other in terms of financing volume and its trends. One should emphasize that in the table, the total financing as such forms the basis for classification, not as propor-tionate to student or faculty numbers.

According to Table 5, the large universities that grow faster than average include TU München, NTU Singapore, DTU Copen-hagen and Caltech. The level of financing is high at ETH Zürich but its volume has not changed significantly during the exami-nation period.

The strong growth of DTU (Copenhagen) is due to the merg-ers in research units, which almost doubled its economic volume in 2007-2008 (DTU, Årsrapport 2008). This also explains the vari-ation in other statistics describing its key figures. When compar-ing resources, one should therefore also keep in mind that some individual large-scale changes such as reorganization and merg-ers have an impact on university figures. In case of Caltech, it is difficult to estimate the extent to which the change stems from strong annual fluctuation.

Finnish universities can, with few exceptions, be found on the bottom left corner, which means their volume of financing and its developments have been below the median. The low level of financing volume is due to the selected method of examination: only engineering education has been included for multi-discipli-

11

Table 5. universiTies as cross-TabulaTed for financing volume and iTs growTh (comparison based on currencies correcTed for purchasing power) .

Annual change in financing 2006–2011

Lowest 3/14 Second 4/14 Third 4/14 Highest 3/14

Fina

ncin

g vo

lum

e

Highest 3/14 ETH, Zürich

NTU, SingaporeTU, München

Third 4/14

Aalto/TKK KTH, Stockholm

DTU, Copen- hagen

Caltech, Pasadena

Second 4/14TUT Oulu Univ, tech LUT, tech

TPU, Tomsk

Lowest 3/14 Turku Univ, tech ÅA, tech

Vaasan Univ, tech

(This and corresponding tables in this report present universities only as cross-tabulated in their order; the possible distances do not signify identical differences in scale.)

2.2 essentIal sources of fInancIng

When examining university financing, one should not only in-spect its amounts but also its sources and terms. Table 6 com-piles the essential financing sources per university. For the Finnish universities, the data are collected for years 2006–2009 27 , as the new Universities Act in 2010 changed the method of collect-ing statistics, which is why the data from 2010 and 2011 are not commensurate. Five essential instruments are examined: public budgeting, competed research funding (mainly public), competed other funding28, tuition fee, and donations. In this calculation, the categories are exclusive. In addition, Table 7 presents categories 6 and 7 for funding received from the EU and from other interna-tional operators and companies. These percentages overlap with the other categories as they include “competed financing” and “competed other financing”.

25 Aalto University has only been examined for its engineering education, which is roughly the scope of Helsinki University of Technology. This is why the merger of the University of Arts and Design and Helsinki School of Economics has no influence on the financial figures of Aalto University.

26 Chief inspector Jukka Haapamäki OKM, email 21.9.2012.

nary universities, whereas all foreign universities were examined as a whole. In terms of financing volume, Aalto University / Helsinki University of Technology25 is located above the median but the growth of its financing volume has been slower than average; the financing volumes of the University of Vaasa and Åbo Akademi University have grown faster than the median. In case of Vaasa, the growth can be accounted for by the growth related to the start-up phase of the youth education unit.

The growth in operating volume in Finnish universities can be explained for by the change adopted in the new Universities Act in the method of collecting expense statistics, especially by the fact that common university expenses are currently allotted more pre-cisely than before to the different educational fields. 26 In the long run, cash flow is also impacted by the fact that universities can spend income from the equity capital they have gathered. One should also remember that the selected method of examination does not reveal whether the change derives from the amount of external funding or from university-internal allocation of money.

12

Table 7. funding provided by The eu and companies, share of funding .

University

Funding from the EU and other

international organizations

Corporate financing

ETH, Zürich 3.2% 7.6%

Vaasa Univ, tech (2006-09) 1.6% 8.8%

TUT (2006-09) 4.0% 9.9%

DTU, Copenhagen Not available 5.9%

TU München (2006-09) Not available Not available

NTU, Singapore Not available Not available

TPU, Tomsk - Not available

KTH, Stockholm 5.5% 4.9%

Oulu Univ, tech (2006-09) 7.4% 1.4%

LUT, tech (2006-09) 5.3% 16.3%

TKK / Aalto (2006-09) 4.0% 10.0%

Turku Univ, tech (2006-09) 0.9% 7.0%

ÅA, tech (2006-09) 6.0% 18.9%

Caltech Not available Not available

Table 6. The share of some essenTial financing sources of The ToTal universiTy funding .

UniversityBudgeted financing

Competed re-search financing

Competed other financing Tuition fees Donations Other financing Total

ETH, Zürich 79.0% 11.2% 7.6% 29 0.0% 2.2% - 100%

Vaasa Univ, tech (06-09) 76.4% 22.2% 1.4% - - - 100%

DTU, Copenhagen 61.4% 27.3% 4.9% 0.4% 1.2% 4.8% 100%

TUT (06-09) 60.1% 33.7% 6.2% - - - 100%

TU München (06-10) 58.9% 33.0% 6.2% 30 2.0% - - 100%

NTU, Singapore 58.6% 11.5% 3.7% 16.9% 4.0% 5.3% 100%

TPU, Tomsk 56.3% 22.4% - 14.1% 3.3% 3.9% 100%

KTH, Stockholm 55.6% 37.1% 1.9% 4.9%31 - 0.5% 100%

Oulu Univ, tech (06-09) 55.1% 36.6% 8.3% - - - 100%

LUT, tech (06-09) 53.8% 38.7% 7.5% - - - 100%

TKK / Aalto (2006-09) 52.2% 44.0% 3.8% - - 100%

Turku Univ, tech (06-09) 47.7% 43.2% 9.1% - - - 100%

ÅA, tech (06-09) 41.7% 51.3% 7.0% - - - 100%

Caltech - 58.3% 6.3% 4.9% 5.2% 25.3% 100%

27 Source: Kota-online – Financial statements – Budgeted funding and external funding per funding source. Construction investments not included.28 The category ”Other external funding” includes diverse types of income per university, but what they have in common is that they involve funding acquired for purposes

outside research and basic education. In case of Finnish universities, the competed research funding includes all funding received from the Finnish Academy and TEKES and from other financiers, everything that can be labeled as research funding. The KOTA database does not indicate what is included in “other funding” but assumedly it involves income from invoiced services. For KTH, we have included everything outside degree education funded through the state budget and revenue estimate. The data for DTU include the category “commercial services”.

29 Partnerships with companies. Probably including also research funding. 30 Income from commerical activities. (Erwirtschaftliche Einnahmen)31 Including expenses from basic and post-graduate education.

The figures have mainly been calculated by adding income from the years 2006-2011, and out of this sum, the share of each fi-nancing instrument has been extracted. For donations, only those accounted to the university budget have been included, in other words, those published in the university financial statements.

When examining the figures, one should keep in mind that the figures represent the relative share of the different sources of income. This explains why Aalto University / Helsinki University of Technology is responsible for the largest share of competed research funding, even though the share of this type of funding does not differ essentially from the other instruments.

Caltech’s income does not include direct budget funding. However, their competed research funding has been extracted from the financial statements category “Grants and contracts”, which may include e.g. federal support similar to budgeted fund-ing. In the examination period, the share of investment revenue totaled only 1.5% but the revenue fluctuated extremely on the level of 300 million dollars profit or loss when the total funding

13

Table 8. cross-TabulaTed shares of budgeTed funding and compeTed research funding .

Competed research funding %


Budg

eted

fund

ing

Highest 3/14ETH, Zürich Vaasa Univ, tech

DTU, Copenhagen

Third 4/14 NTU Singapore

TUT TU München

TPU Tomsk

Second 4/14

KTH, Stockholm Oulu Univ, tech LUT, tech

Aalto/TKK

Lowest 3/14 Turku Univ, tech

ÅA, tech Caltech

32 http://admissions.caltech.edu/affording/costs. Acquired 5.12.2012.

without Jet Propulsion Laboratory amounted to 500-600 mil-lion dollars.

The share of tuition fees was relatively small in the examina-tion period in all the universities except for NTU in Singapore and Tomsk polytechnic. The case of Singapore, however, is not that clear-cut since they have received public funding from several ministries and it is unclear how much of it was budgeted funding and how much competed. Even though tuition fees have formed only a small share of the total income at Caltech, they have ad-mittedly been high from the student perspective, as in fall 2012 the fee was 38,000 dollars.32 Fees of this level are exceptionally high; the public Jongbloed and Dassen universities in California charged state residents 6,200 dollars for bachelor’s studies and 9,400 for master’s studies in 2009. For out-of-towners, the fee was approximately 17,000 dollars. (Jongbloed & Dassen 2009, 20 – 21.)

Table 8 cross-tabulates the shares of budgeted financing and competed research funding. The categorization follows the same principle as the previous compilation; in other words, universities have been divided into four groups: the lowest three, the four be-low the median, the four above the median, and the three highest.

According to the table, all Finnish universities, except for Tampere University of Technology, receive budgeted funding the share of which is lower than the median and competed funding the share of which is above the median. The large proportion of competed funding does not tell enough about the university’s financial situation. Essentially one should know how well it sup-

ports long-run operations and how much critical discussion and new knowledge creation it allows. The fifth chapter examines university-industry collaboration and also strategic partnerships, one of the aims of which is to make sure the collaboration and its funding are long standing.

2.3 fundIng compared to student number and flow

2.3.1 Trends in student number and flow

Above we have examined total funding, which does not neces-sarily correspond to the number of students being educated with these resources. This is why we will next compare university fund-ing to the number of students they educate. As mentioned in In-troduction, the figures were calculated by means of two methods: in relation to the student number and in relation to student flow. The following tables present the key figures related to student numbers and flows, or the average ratio from the years 2006-11, average in annual change, and standard deviation of the change. As illustrated in Table 9, Finnish universities, with the exception of the relatively new Turku and Vaasa Universities, differ from other universities in that their student masses have declined during the examination period.

14

Table 9. sTudenT numbers (bachelor’s and masTer’s sTudenTs, fTe33) per universiTy, key figures .

UniversityAverage 2006-11

Annual change, average 2006-11, %

Standard deviation in annual change, %

TU München (06-10) 23,576 5.1% 1.8

NTU, Singapore34 21,013 5.9% 2.1

TPU, Tomsk35 16,476 2.0% 5.2

KTH, Stockholm 12,827 2.0% 5.1

ETH, Zürich36 11,357 4.6% 6.3

Aalto / TKK 7,659 -1.6% 4.3

TUT 6,247 -2.8% 3.6

DTU, Copenhage 4,586 2.0% 4.3

LUT, tech 2,487 -1.9% 3.2

Oulu Univ, tech 2,373 -4.1% 2.0

Caltech, Pasadena37 2,172 0.3% 2.0

ÅA, tech 374 -5.9% 3.6

Turku Univ, tech 270 8.0% 8.4

Vaasa Univ, tech 238 1.1% 6.9

Table 10. key figures regarding sTudenT flow 2006–2011 .

University

Average student flow Average2006-11

Annual change % Average 2006 - 2011

Standard deviation in change

%

Registered/ master’s /doctoral%-ratio38

Average student flow/ student number,

average2006 - 2011

TPU, Tomsk 2,833 3.30% 12.0 57/41/3 0.17

TU München (06–10) 2,751 1.90% 5.1 67/29/339 0.12

NTU, Singapore40 2,472 Not applicable Not applicable 45/46/941 (0,08)42

KTH, Stockholm 1,518 2.60% 5.0 56/39/5 0.12

ETH, Zürich 1,410 4.10% 4.5 54/31/15 0.09

Aalto / TKK 786 -3.00% 22.4 51/41/8 0.10

DTU, Copenhagen 736 4.40% 5.0 57/35/9 0.15

TUT 594 -2.50% 26.5 46/49/4 0.10

LUT, tech 267 2.60% 18.9 38/58/4 0.11

Oulu Univ, tech 241 -0.80% 20.6 49/52/6 0.10

Caltech, Pasadena 179 0.84% 4.6 44/22/34 (0,08)43

ÅA, tech 47 -5.40% 3.9 45/46/9 0.13

Turku Univ, tech 23 13.00% 0.3 66/29/4 0.09

Vaasa Univ, tech 20 18.80% 30.9 63/34/3 0.09

Table 10 presents information about student flows. The lev-els of student flow largely follow the order of student numbers, in other words, student flow is typically larger in universities with more students. This will be further investigated later in this report.

One should also pay attention to the fact that student flow profiles vary strongly between universities. At Caltech the share of doctoral degrees is extremely large. In traditional Finnish uni-versities the share of master’s degrees is relatively large compared to the number of students at the beginning of their studies. This signals a cut-down on the number of students accepted and that

at the end of the examination period a large number of students graduated thanks to the end of the transition period in 2010 from the old to the new degree system. (KKA 2010a, 96). The Finnish figures may also have been impacted by universities increasingly accepting students to complete the master’s degree on the basis of the bachelor’s degree.

In universities where full-time students determine the amount of students, the ratio of student flow to student num-ber has without few exceptions been almost the same, in the proximity of 0.9-0.12. The smallest ratio was found with Caltech

15

33 FTE:”Full time equivalent”, or the calculated value for full-time student. The calculation draws from figures in the Kota and Vipunen databases as well as figures com-municated by the foreign universities.

34 All registered students, including doctoral students. 35 For TPU Tomsk, full-time students have been counted as such and the number of part-timers has been divided by two.36 All the registered students.37 All registrations, including doctoral students.38 The figures have been calculated by adding figures from the years 2006-2011 and by extracting the numbers of those having begun their studies, having completed

their master’s degree and having completed their doctoral degree. 39 Conferment-level degrees, excluding habilitation-level degrees. 40 Academic years 2005/2006, 2006/2007, 2008/2009, 2009/2010. Semesters have been included within academic years according to the end year.41 NTU Singapore did not make available the number of students beginning their studies, instead their first figure conveys the number of bachelor’s degrees. 42 Student number also includes post-graduate students. 43 Student number also includes post-graduate students, which explains for the somewhat low figure compared to universities where student numbers only include bach-

elor’s and master’s-level students. 44 For DTU, the corresponding ratio is 0.11 based on the total number of students. Their number of full-time students is based on the amount they conveyed in their

annual report (Antal STÅ = studentårsværk). In the Danish system, the annual calculative student workload has been defined as 60 ECTS (http://www.sdu.dk/om_sdu/dokumentation_tal/studiestatistik/student_aarsvaerk). In Finland those registered that have completed less than 30 ECTS are regarded as a 0.5 student (until 2009 less than 20 ECTS), and those with more than 30 as full-time students.

45 This may result from a statistical error: the student number has been calculated by adding half of the part-time students to the number of full-time students. If part-timers study more actively, the student number seems to be lower than in reality, which may explain for the exceptional ratio.

and NTU Singapore. In the case of Caltech, the figure stems from the large number of doctoral students, who have been included in the student number. The only exceptions are TPU Tomsk and DTU Copenhagen. They both base their student number on full-time students, which provides a more strict result.

When cross-tabulating the data (Table 11), one finds that the order of magnitude of the universities roughly follows the order based on student number and student flow, as assumed in Introduction. The only exception is TPU Tomsk, where student flow is exceptionally strong. This can clearly been seen in the ratio

presented in the last column of Table 10. Similarly, the student number of DTU (Copenhagen) is relatively small compared to the student flow but the reason could be the extremely strict way of counting full-time students.

When scrutinizing the change in student numbers and stu-dent flows, one can detect greater differences. Table 12 presents changes in both student numbers and student flows for each university. Those units have been highlighted where the trends in student number and student flow differ at least by 2 percent-age points.

Table 11. sTudenT number and sTudenT flow as cross-TabulaTed per universiTy .

Student flow


Stud

ent n

umbe

r

Highest 3/14 TU, MünchenNTU, Singapore TPU, Tomsk

Third 4/14

TUT, Tre

KTH, Stockholm ETH, Zürich Aalto/TKK

Second 4/14 LUT, tech Oulu Univ, techCaltech

DTU, Copenhagen

Lowest 3/14 ÅA, tech. Turku Univ, techVaasa Univ, tech

16

Table 12. sTudenT number, sTudenT flow, comparison of changes .

Change in student number2006-11

University Change in student flow

2006-11

8.0% Turku Univ, tech 13.0%

5.9% NTU, Singapore Not applicable

5.1% TU Münch. (06-10) 1.9%

4.6% ETH, Zürich 4.1%

2.0% DTU, Copenhagen 4.4%

2.0% TPU, Tomsk 3.3%

2.0% KTH, Stockholm 2.6%

1.1% Vaasa Univ, tech 1.8%

0.3% Caltech, Pasadena 0.8%

-1.6% Aalto / TKK -3.0%

-1.9% LUT, tech 2.6%

-2.8% TUT -2.5%

-4.1% Oulu Univ, tech -0.8%

-5.9% ÅA, engineering faculty -5.4%

TU München and four Finnish universities stand out in the comparison: the University of Turku, the University of Vaasa, Lap-peenranta University of Technology, and the University of Oulu. The student flow has grown rapidly in Turku and Vaasa, which may be accounted for by the strong random fluctuation in small and growing units. Student numbers have declined in Lappeen-ranta University of Technology and the University of Oulu but student flow has reacted with some delay; in other words, the number of graduations has remained at a high level. In principle, the delay takes the time of typical graduation in duration, or 6-7 years, even though new master’s degree admissions impact the student flow to some extent.

The exceptional declining trend of Finnish universities in stu-dent number probably stems both from the pursuit of efficacy of studies and decrease in drop-outs, and from the decrease in student places, which is a goal articulated in the education de-velopment plan. (OKM 2007, see also OKM 2005, 48). According to the Kota and Vipunen databases, the number of new students of technology (bachelor’s and master’s in total) has steadily de-creased in 2006 – 2011, from 3,770 in 2006 to 3,483 in 2011.

As mentioned above, traditional Finnish universities are characterized by a strong degree peak in 2010 upon the end of the transition period between the degree systems (KKA 2010b, 96). This also explains the substantially low amount of degrees in 2011 compared to 2010. Probably for this reason, the annual fluctuation in student flow has been stronger in Finnish universi-ties than in others.

2.3.2 Financing compared to student number

The following calculations are based on university total financ-ing, including also research funding. This method was chosen because not nearly all financing collected by universities is al-located to teaching or research. Another alternative would have been to rely on university reporting on their resource use but not all universities itemize their expenses on a level detailed enough to specify the amount of money spent on teaching. Addition-ally, one must keep in mind that the share of financing spent on teaching cannot be unambiguously separated; it is not separated in nearly all financial statements, and even the ones that offer the information make it difficult to estimate to what extent they are commensurate, how have e.g. common administrative univer-sity costs (administration, premises etc.) been allotted between teaching and research.

Equally problematic is whether doctoral students should be included in student numbers. The situation varies from country to country: in the U.S. Caltech and Singaporean NTU they are part of the student mass. In the Danish DTU doctoral students are categorized more as researchers that are on the payroll. Instead of the students paying for their education, the university receives state financing to employ them. There is probably also variation between countries in the extent to which doctoral students work independently or are supervised. In this report, doctoral students have not been included in student number with the few excep-tions mentioned above. Contrastively, they have been included in student flow.

When financing is contrasted to the number of students completing their bachelors’ and master’s degrees, the best re-sources by far are granted to the U.S. Caltech (the actual difference is even bigger as doctoral students could not be eliminated from Caltech figures). The high key figures and intensive change in DTU (Copenhagen) are likely to draw largely from what was explained above, that is, the fact that the university merged in the exami-nation period with several research units, which strongly added to the financing volume. The ratio can also be higher because the method of counting full-time students at DTU may be more strictly governed than in other European universities.

Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU Tomsk) has the scarcest resources per student, but the difference with Finnish universi-ties is relatively small. If its situation was compared on the basis of currencies without correction for purchasing power parity, its resource situation would be worse by roughly 50%. It can run its operations probably thanks to a relatively low salary level and other corresponding expenses. On the other hand, purchasing devices, ordering international publications, travelling abroad, and other international activities burden its finances more than Finnish universities.

17

Table 14. financing volume compared To sTudenT flow, average for The years 2006-2011 .

UniversityAverage student flow, average 2006 - 2011

Average student flow / student number

average 2006 – 2011

Financing / student flow 1000 USD PPP,average 2006 - 2011

Financing / student flow,

annual change %,average 2006 - 2011

Annual change, standard deviation,

% point

Caltech, Pasadena 179 (0.08)49 3,332.5 27,00% 68.1

ETH, Zürich 1410 0.10 593.9 2,7% 6.0

DTU, Copenhagen 736 0.15 543.0 19,80% 33.9

ÅA, tech 52 0.13 435.3 21.40% 10.4

NTU, Singapore50 2472 (0.08)51 413.0 - -

Aalto / TKK 786 0.10 352.3 17.10% 27.7

KTH, Stockholm 1528 0.12 321.8 4.70% 9.7

Turku Univ, tech 23 0.09 251.9 2.70% 29.1

Oulu Univ, tech 241 0.10 237.8 13.20% 20.7

Vaasa Univ, tech 20 0.09 233.1 10.10% 6.9

TU München (06-10) 2751 0.12 228.5 8.30% 5.3

TUT 594 0.10 213.0 17.5% 29.4

LUT, tech 267 0.11 192.5 7.90% 14.4

Tomsk52 2633 0.17 86.6 8.80% 19.6

Table 13. relaTive financing per sTudenT (bachelors’ and masTer’s sTudenTs, fTe) . (average 2006 – 2011)

UniversityFinancing/ student46 1000 USD PPP,

average 2006 - 2011Financing/ student, annual change

% average 2006 - 2011Standard deviation in annual

change % points

Caltech, Pasadena47 272.3 27.0% 65.5

DTU, Copenhagen 87.5 22.2% 36.1

ETH, Zürich 73.9 2.4% 8.6

ÅA, tech 55.0 22.3% 12.3

NTU, Singapore48 35.5 2.5% 18.0

Aalto / TKK 35.4 9.0% 6.2

KTH, Stockholm 28.5 5.5% 8.5

TU München (2006-10) 26.6 4.8% 2.2

Oulu Univ, tech 24.2 13.1% 11.4

Turku Univ, tech 22.6 -1.5% 13.2

TUT 20.2 10.5% 8.6

LUT, tech 18.8 12.6% 22.8

Vaasa Univ, tech 17.9 15.5% 29.6

TPU, Tomsk 14.8 8.9% 15.5

46 The figure in the column is the key figure average within the examination period (2006-2011), that is, an annual ratio calculated on the basis of students (O) and resources (R). The table presents the figure average by following the formula (R1/O1 + … Rn/On)/N. If the corresponding ratio is calculated from resources (Table 4) and student numbers (Table 9), the result is slightly different as the formula is ((R1+…+Rn)/( O1+…+On)).

47 The student number includes also doctoral students. 48 The student number includes also doctoral students. 49 The student number also includes doctoral students, which explains for the slightly lower figures compared to other universities which only included bachelor’s and

master’s-level students. 50 For NTU Singapore, data are only available for the years 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010. Due to the missing years, changes in annual ratios were not calculated. The student flow

figures included bachelor’s degrees instead of students having begun their studies. 51 Student number includes also doctoral students.52 Instead of doctoral degrees, we used the number of students who have begun their scientific post-graduate studies as the third checkpoint.

18

Finnish universities are found below the median, with the exception of Åbo Akademi University and Aalto University / Helsinki University of Technology. In both cases the explanation lies in the large portion of competed financing (See Table 6). The competed research financing is not, however, assigned directly to teaching, which means the factual teaching resources are likely to be poorer than presented in Table 13. The situation with Finnish universities in comparison to others is probably compensated for by the inclusion of engineering education only, whereas the other universities were analyzed for also other education, which can be substantially less expensive than engineering education.

As mentioned above, the massive changes at Caltech derive from the massive fluctuation in its investment income.

When considering the change in consumer index, which in the examination period was an annual 2.2%, one can tentatively estimate that the resources have grown in the examination pe-riod in all the universities except for Singapore, ETH and the Uni-versity of Turku.

Table 14 presents the corresponding ratios in relation to student flow. The calculation excludes bachelor’s degrees as the system was not established in all the case universities, to thereby avoid yielding misleading results.

The ratios are similar to previous calculations, meaning that the observations therefore support each other. In all the Finnish universities, with the exception of Aalto University / TKK, the level of resourcing compared to student flow is lower than in the comparison universities. TU München ranks quite low on the list

but it is because its student flow is relatively fast compared to the student number.

The relatively small student flow / student number ratio at NTU Singapore derives from its student numbers also including doctoral students. Additionally, the number of new students has grown annually all throughout the examination period, which in the short run has a stronger impact on student number than on student flow.

The resource situation compared to student flow at TPU Tomsk is considerably weaker than in the comparison universities. The difference is induced by their student flow being much faster than in the other universities. The strong deviation in the resource development in Finnish universities probably stems from the peak caused by the end of the degree transition in 2010.

Tables 15 and 16 cross-tabulate universities according to their resourcing relative to student number and student flow. Table 16 illustrates resourcing and Table 17 changes in resourcing.

Table 15 demonstrates that the university order of magni-tude is roughly the same both in terms of student number and student flow. Table 16 compares the change in financing to stu-dent number and student flow. The table shows that the Finnish universities vary in terms of their resourcing development. This could be resultative of the major annual deviation in the key fig-ures. Additionally, one must keep in mind that, contrary to their foreign counterparts, the Finnish universities have experienced an improved ratio, thanks to the smaller admission quotas.

Table 15. universiTy financing compared To sTudenT number and sTudenT flow .

Financing / student flow


Fina

ncin

g /

num

ber o

f stu

dent

s

Highest 3/14 Caltech DTU CopenhagenETH Zürich

Third 4/14

ÅA, tech NTU, Singapore Aalto/TKKKTH, Stockholm

Second 4/14

TUT, Tre

TU München Turku Univ, tech Oulu Univ, tech

Lowest 3/14 LUT, tech.

TPU, Tomsk

Vaasa Univ, tech

19

2.4 resources and sources of fInancIng – prelImInary summary

The key observations regarding university resourcing could be summarized as follows:1. The absolute financial volume of operations in Finnish uni-

versities providing engineering education has grown more slowly than in most of the comparison universities. Of the largest institutions, the speed of growth was slowest at ETH Zürich.

2. In Finnish universities, the share of budgeted funding is small-er than abroad and correspondingly the share of competed research funding is larger.

3. In the Finnish universities, resourcing compared to student number and flow is on average on a poorer level compared to the foreign counterparts, except for Aalto University / TKK and Åbo Akademi University. With these three, the positive ratio results at least partly from a vast amount of competed research funding, which, however, does not benefit teaching.

4. Resourcing compared to student number and flow has grown faster than the average in all the Finnish universities except for Aalto University / TKK and the University of Turku. What may seem like an increase in resourcing actually stems from a decrease in student number.

5. In most Finnish universities, the annual fluctuation in indi-cators regarding student flow has been strong compared to the foreign universities. The introduction of the new degree system and the related end of transition period have probably contributed to these indicators by increasing the amount of completed degrees in 2010 and resulting in declined numbers the following year.

Table 16. change in financing compared To sTudenT number and sTudenT flow .

Change in financing / student flow


Cha

nge

in fi

nanc

ing

/ st

uden

t num

ber Highest 3/14

Caltech ÅA, techDTU, Copenhagen

Third 4/14 LUT, tech.

Vaasa Univ, tech. Oulu Univ, tech.

TUT, Tre

Second 4/14 TPU, TomskKTH, Stockholm TU München

Aalto/TKK

Lowest 3/14(NTU, Singapore) ETH, Zürich Turku Univ, tech.

20

3. Resources and teaching

transition from the Kota database to Vipunen. In practice this has meant, among others, that the calculative total numbers of academic staff grew at the time, apparently regardless of the actual change in resourcing. This is why the figures describing the trends and annual fluctuation in the Finnish universities are probably too high.

In addition to examining resourcing and workload, we con-duct a random sample test to compare how much contact teaching is included in the 180-credit bachelor’s degree and in the 120-credit master’s degree, respectively. The examination covers Finnish degree programs in mechanical engineering, information technology and energy technology, as well as degree programs in mechanical engineering at DTU, ETH and TU München. The examination aims to investigate whether the differences in re-sourcing or workload also cause differences in the amount of degree-fulfilling contact teaching.

3.1 fInancIng compared to the number of academIc faculty

As stated above, we examine the resources and workload of academic faculty by comparing the total funding of a university (or an engineering education unit in case of a multi-disciplinary Finnish university) to the number of academic faculty. The next phase is to compare the number of students to the staff. To gen-eralize, we are calculating first how much money the academic faculty have at their disposal, and then how large a mass the uni-versity or its engineering faculty are expected to educate.

Table 17 presents data on the amounts of academic staff and changes in these amounts as background information for indicators presented later in this report. The small size of Finnish universities is accentuated by the inclusion of engineering educa-tion only. The data in the table are presented in full man-years.

This chapter examines the amount of resources compared to the amount of academic faculty and the workload of academic staff, by calculating the amount of students in relation to academic staff. Additionally, we investigate the implementation of contact teaching and whether differences in resources impact teaching.

The amount of financing compared to academic staff reveals information about the resources teachers and researchers have on average at their disposal. Student number and flow contrasted to the number of staff, then, unfold the levels of workload among academic faculty.

Not all academic staff members teach and therefore the in-dicator does not convey information about the level of workload of those with teaching duties. The sources available do not allow us to extract those with teaching duties from all staff for all uni-versities under examination.

Further, research cannot always be clearly separated from teaching; e.g. for professors, it is somewhat difficult to determine which share of the workload is assigned to teaching and which to other tasks. One can also wonder to what extent the number of teachers impacts the quality of teaching as opposed to the size and quality of the academic community. Students not only learn in class but also independently, which is when they essentially need role models among teachers and successful researchers, as well as a supportive university culture and a learning environment that help build cooperation between students and academic staff. It is also problematic that in resource comparisons, the number of teaching staff should be compared to resources directed to teaching, which is challenging owing to the difficulty in separat-ing teaching resources from total funding in a commensurate way. For these reasons, the situation of academic faculty is treated as a whole, without making a distinction between teaching and researching staff.

For the Finnish universities, one should emphasize that the bases of statistics collection changed in 2009-2010 due to the

21

Table 17. academic faculTy (man-years) .

UniversityAverage

2006 –11

Annual change %, average,

2006 – 2011

Standard deviation in change, %

ETH, Zürich 4,518 5.3% 2.9

TU München (06-10) 3,571 7.4% 12

NTU, Singapore 2,598 11.0% 20.1

KTH, Stockholm 2,049 4.1% 3.6

Aalto / TKK 1,987 5.2% 17.7

TPU, Tomsk 1,754 1.6% 3.3

DTU, Copenhagen 53 1,447 15.7% 23

TUT 1,182 1.8% 3.4

Caltech, Pasadena 928 0.0% 2.5

Oulu Univ, tech 474 3.4% 5.6

LUT, tech 445 0.4% 12.5

ÅA, tech 171 7.4% 8.8

Turku Univ, tech 67 0.2% 6.4

Vaasa Univ, tech 30 3.8% 26.4

Table 18 shows that the resources in Finnish universities com-pared to the number of academic faculty are essentially lower than in most of the comparison universities.

Table 18. ToTal funding / academic faculTy, average 2006 – 2011 .

University

Average2006 - 20111000 USD

PPP

Average annual change

%

Standard deviation % points

Caltech 639.9 27.3% 66.4

NTU, Singapore 396.2 0.4% 2.5

DTU, Copenhagen 274.2 11.5% 38.6

ETH, Zürich 185.6 1.3% 4.9

KTH, Stockholm 178.3 3.3% 7.8

TU München (2006-10) 176.4 3.9% 12.9

Vaasa Univ, tech 141.3 10.3% 28.2

TPU, Tomsk 139.4 9.0% 12.4

Aalto / TKK 136.9 3.0% 15

Oulu Univ, tech 118.0 9.8% 12.6

ÅA, tech 114.1 7.4% 10.3

LUT, tech 111.4 8.2% 5.8

TUT 106.7 5.3% 1.7

Turku Univ, tech 98.7 16.3% 15.7

At Åbo Akademi University the ratio of funding to the aca-demic faculty is rather small. This signals a vast amount of pro-ject researchers with apparently limited funding. As mentioned above, the share of competed funding is relatively large compared to other universities.

When the amount of students is compared to academic faculty (Table 19), we obtain a different perspective to the data. Finnish universities do not essentially differ from their foreign counterparts. When comparing the ratios one should, however, keep in mind that in Finnish universities, the share of external project funding is relatively large, which may raise the number of faculty focusing on research and development.

53 The figures do not include doctoral students on the payroll.54 Not including doctoral students that are on the university payroll.

Table 19. full-Time sTudenTs / academic faculTy (fTe) (average 2006 – 2011) .

University

Students (FTE)/

academic facultyaverage

2006 – 2011

Annual change,average

2006 – 2011

Standard deviation in annual

change

Number of academic

faculty,average

2006 – 2011

Tomsk 9.4 0.5% 6,5 1754

Vaasa Univ, tech 8.1 3.1% 23,2 30

NTU, Singapore 7.7 -1.6% 16.3 2,598

TU München 6.7 -0.9% 12.3 3,571

KTH, Stockholm 6.3 -1.9% 5.7 2,049

LUT, tech 5.6 -0.6% 13.4 445

TUT 5.3 -4.3% 6.2 1,182

Oulu Univ, tech 5.1 -6.9% 6.9 474

Turku Univ, tech 4.8 19.6% 19.7 67

Aalto / TKK 4.0 -4.5% 18.6 1,967

ETH, Zürich 3.4 -0.2% 2.8 4,518

DTU Copenhagen 3.3 -8.8% 15.7 1,44754

ÅA, tech 2.3 -11.5% 9.9 171

Caltech 2.3 0.3% 3.4 928

22

The annual fluctuation of this key indicator has in Finnish universities been more intense than in most of the foreign uni-versities. This could stem from some random factors: student numbers (and flows) were probably impacted by the renewal of the degree system and the related peaks in graduation at the end of the transition period; teacher numbers were perhaps impacted by the method of collecting statistics.

Student flow compared to academic faculty was largest at Tomsk Polytechnic, NTU Singapore and TU München (Table 20). Student flow was lowest and extremely stable at Caltech, regard-less of fluctuation in annual income55. This could mean that it is possible to run operations on a stable (high) level when the eq-uity capital is solid (high).

Table 20. sTudenT flow/ academic faculTy (average 2006-2011) .

UniversityAverage

2006 - 2011

Annual change, average

2006 - 2011

Standard deviation in change% point

TPU, Tomsk 1.63 1.8 % 12.8

NTU Singapore (2006, -07, -09, -10)

0.96Not

applicableNot

applicable

TU München (2006 - 2011) 0.78 -3.5% 15.5

KTH, Stockholm 0.74 -1.7% 5.1

Vaasa Univ, tech 0.62 16.1% 24.5

LUT, tech 0.58 2.0% 13.6

DTU, Copenhagen 0.53 -6.7% 16.1

TUT 0.52 -4.9% 23.3

Oulu Univ, tech 0.51 -4.7% 15.6

ETH, Zürich 0.43 1.1% 7.8

Turku Univ, tech 0.41 21.6% 34.1

Aalto / TKK 0.40 -8.1% 35.9

ÅA, tech 0.28 -11.4% 6.1

Caltech 0.19 0.8% 2.7

Cross-tabulation (Tables 19 and 20) of the aforementioned ratios shows that the order of the universities remains roughly the same, or at least no major differences of scale surface. The teach-ing load seems therefore to be approximately the same, whether measured against student number or student flow. Mainly DTU Copenhagen seems to deviate from the general trend. This could result from the method of calculation: their student number has been calculated extremely strictly, which is why their student flow is large compared to student number.

When cross-tabulating resources against academic faculty and, on the other hand, student number against academic fac-ulty, we obtain results as illustrated in Table 21, which no longer shows a clear pattern. The table makes sense if we keep in mind that part of the faculty has no teaching duties and the size of this group varies between the universities. This results in e.g. Aalto / TKK, the University of Turku, the University of Oulu and Åbo Akademi University to operate on small funding compared to the number of faculty; at the same time, the number of students is low compared to the number of faculty. This is accounted for by the high extent of external research funding, but the budget-ing of individual projects is tight. In other words, staff is sizeable compared to the funding but a significant proportion is engaged in tasks other than teaching. This also results in a small student number compared to the total number of academic faculty. Prob-ably this also contributes positively to other indicators describing the resource level in Finnish universities.

At NTU Singapore, the amount of financing is probably high and its majority consists of budgeted funding and tuition fees, and is therefore apparently mainly directed to teaching. The number of academic faculty is, however, not large as in the case of Caltech. This is why its size of funding is huge compared to the size of its academic faculty but it is responsible for a vaster number of stu-dents than the average.

The comparison highlights the different characteristics of the universities: Caltech faculty have plenty of resources at their dis-posal and few students; NTU Singapore has sufficient resources but plenty of students compared to academic faculty. Finnish universities suffer from scarce funding compared to the amount of academic faculty but the amount of students varies, appar-ently depending on how extensively the institutions run research projects and other activities outside core teaching with external funding.

55 See Tables 4, 13 and 14.

The decrease in ratios describing the situation at DTU (Co-penhagen) results from the research alliances created in 2008, which strongly increased its number of academic faculty. This has significantly decreased its student number and flow compared to academic faculty. The university has in the recent years begun to build related education under the umbrella of the research units, which may narrow down the difference to other universities in the future. (Nicolai Amdrup, interview)

23

Table 21. sTudenT number and sTudenT flow compared To The number of academic faculTy .

Student flow / academic faculty


Stud

ents

/ a

cade

mic

facu

lty

Highest 3/14 Vaasa Univ, tech TPU Tomsk

NTU, Singapore

Third 4/14

TUT, Tre

KTH, Stockholm LUT, tech

TU München

Second 4/14 Aalto/TKK

Oulu Univ, techTurku Univ, tech

ETH, Zürich

Lowest 3/14 ÅA, techCaltech

DTU, Copenhagen

Table 22. financing compared To The number of academic faculTy versus sTudenT number compared To The number of academic faculTy .

Students / academic faculty


Fina

ncin

g /

aca

dem

ic fa

cult

y

Highest 3/14

Caltech

DTU, Copen- hagen

NTU, Singapore

Third 4/14

ETH, Zürich KTH, Stockholm TU München

Vaasa Univ,, tech

Second 4/14

ÅA, tech

Aalto/TKK Oulu Univ, tech

TPU, Tomsk

Lowest 3/14 Turku Univ, tech

LUT, tech TUT, Tre

24

3.2 resources compared to the number of professors

Funding and resources can be compared also to the number of professors. The result reveals information about resources at the disposal of academics leading scholarly work. The indicators of European universities equal to the results presented in the previ-ous section because they have approximately the same share of professors in staff. Contrastively, the indicator of NTU Singapore proved to be the highest due to the small amount of professors. The U.S. Caltech has the highest share of professors by far but due to the high level of resources, also the level of funding per each individual professor is high.

Table 23. universiTy ToTal funding / professors, average 2006 – 2011 .

University

Professors/academic

faculty, average

2006 – 2011

Financing / professor,average

2006 – 2011 million USD

PPP

Annual change, average

2006 –2011

Standard deviation in

change% point

NTU, Singapore (2007-09)

4.0% 9.94Not

applicableNot

applicable

DTU, Copenhagen

7.9% 3.73 22.7% 27.9

Caltech, (2008-11)

22.9% 2.30 Not ap-plicable

Not appli-cable

ETH, Zürich 8.6% 2.17 1.1% 4.9

TU München (2006-10) 56 10.3% 1.72 5.8% 2.8

Aalto / TKK 10.0% 1.34 3.9% 11.5

KTH, Stockholm 13.6% 1.31 5.0% 6.5

Oulu Univ, tech 10.2% 1.10 8.6% 22.6

Turku Univ, tech 8.5% 1.02 35.2% 55.4

LUT, tech 11.7% 0.96 4.7% 10.9

TUT 11.4% 0.93 5.2% 4.2

ÅA, tech 12.4% 0.93 7.4% 12.9

Vaasa Univ, tech 20.7% 0.68 10.1% 6.9

TPU, Tomsk57 – – – –

The corresponding principles are naturally applicable also to other ratios not calculated separately for this report: in Singapore, student number and student flow are immense per professor. At Caltech, the corresponding indicators are relatively small although above the average due to the large share of professors.

3.3 amount of contact teachIng wIthIn degree programs

This section focuses on estimating to what extent the 180-credit bachelor’s degree and the 120-credit master’s degree in engineer-ing contain contact teaching. The statistics have been collected from Åbo Akademi University study guide and course program, and as for the other universities, from study guides and Weboodi and Noppa portals. The hours have been included as reported by the universities. If a university has only communicated their weekly hours, the data have been included as multiplied by the amount of study weeks and by deducting holiday periods. We included mechanical engineering, energy technology and information technology in our examination. Additionally, we included data on teaching volume from three foreign universities (DTU, Kööpen-hamina58 ; ETH, Zürich59 ; TU München60 ), to allow comparison.

Before delving into the results, we should remind our readers that the method of calculation does not reveal all the informa-tion related to teaching such as thesis and assignment supervision and evaluation, lecture preparation time, time spent on prepar-ing online teaching materials, or supervision online. Calculations regarding lab work are based on hours announced in the study guide for supervised work in labs.

The comparison only focuses on traditional contact teach-ing hours. The calculation was not motivated by the idea that the more contact teaching, the better. It only aimed to examine whether the teaching amounts differ, whether the differences de-rive from differences in resourcing. Further, it would make sense in future studies to consider whether the differences stem from different teaching arrangements.

56 All professors. 57 Data missing.58 Study-related data collected from http://www.pogk.mek.dtu.dk and the links underneath the main page.59 Study-related data collected from http://www.vvz.ethz.ch/Vorlesungsverzeichnis/sucheLehrangebotPre.do;VvzSessionId=BfrbRGmW1BBsQryQfwRZnTVYR7bD16lkJ1vm

DNxGzG8vZryGJ2Ty!1230770183?lang=de. The information regards spring 2012 and fall 2012. 60 Study-related data collected from http://www.mw.tum.de/index.php?cid=1508, and the links underneath the main page.

25

The calculation was achieved by compiling, by means of study guides, exemplary degrees the extent of which was 180 / 120 credits. We did not have access to all study guides, so in case of missing information, the calculation was based on the average amount of teaching per credit and the missing information was deduced following this ratio.

The following presents the results separately for mechani-cal engineering, information technology and energy technology programs.

Table 24. conTacT Teaching hours in mechanical engineering .

Bachelor’s degree Master’s degree

Aalto / TKK 1,795 52861

TUT 1,857 794

LUT, tech 2,091 546

Oulu, tech 1,715 670

ETH 1,94562

DTU 1,946 936

TU München 1,968

Table 25. conTacT Teaching hours in informaTion Technology .


Aalto / TKK 1,770 414

TUT 1,914 794

LUT, tech 1,706 683

Vaasa Univ, tech 1,402 653

ÅA 1,209 684

Oulu Univ, tech 1,579 911

Table 26. conTacT Teaching hours in energy Technology .


Aalto / TKK 1772 658

TUT 2235 938

LUT, tech 1638 598

Vaasa Univ, tech 1428 525

ÅA (Vaasa) - 473

61 Including the ”Product development project”, with its roughly 200 hours of supervised group work. 62 Data on ETH was calculated by including a 20-credit worklife-oriented development project (”Fokus-projekti”) which included no contact teaching.

The calculation shows that the amount of contact teaching varies considerably per university and study program. In addition, the foreign universities included in the examination seem to offer more contact teaching per (minimum) degree. The strong devia-tion probably stems from the degrees having evolved individually, without large-scale coordination or comparison. The differences do not necessarily signify quality differences in teaching but rather they signal extremely different approaches. In terms of teach-ing resources, further research would be in order to investigate more systematically the extent of teaching within degrees, and what types of education are offered as contact, group or project teaching or in online environments or similar contexts. It would be extremely interesting to investigate whether universities that offer less contact teaching offer more self- or group study.

3.4 summary of teachIng resources and ImplementatIon

Data concerning resources directed to academic faculty and on the other hand, their teaching workload can be summarized as follows:1. With the exception of the University of Vaasa, in all Finnish

universities of technology the level of resourcing compared to the number of academic faculty was below the average.

2. At the same time, when comparing teaching workload, that is, student number or flow to the number of academic fac-ulty, the situation in Finnish universities seemed relatively positive as student numbers were relatively small. However, this finding did not emerge when comparing university total funding to student number or flow. This paradox is probably accounted for by a significant share of staff being employed for diverse research projects outside teaching. Finnish uni-versities apparently employ a sizeable mass of researchers for different projects the individual funding of which is small.

3. The examination of contact teaching in bachelor’s and mas-ter’s degrees revealed that the teaching amounts vary ex-tensively. Further studies would show whether this has any impact on the level of teaching and learning and / or study progress.

26

4. Pedagogic development, quality assurance, and novel teaching practices

Until now, teaching has in this report been treated as a phenom-enon that is stable and uniform all throughout the academic world. In practice, degrees and pedagogic practices evolve as the operating environment and pedagogic philosophies evolve. This chapter examines the expectations and challenges posed and impulses instigated by various operators to pedagogic develop-ment and ways in which universities have risen up to these stimuli.

The impact of large-scale renewals on resourcing is two-fold. On the one hand, the implementation of reforms consumes staff working hours and in this respect eats up resources. On the other, innovations open up new ways of profiting from the resources, which could lead to enhanced efficacy. It is not possible here to systematically analyze either effect but rather to describe changes in the operating environment or in some of its most essential aspects and their impact on pedagogic development. We focus primarily on the Finnish universities covered in this report.

If we leave content development outside the scope of this study, the pressures and incentives pushing for pedagogic devel-opment can be divided into four groups: 1) education initiatives taken by the government and Ministry of Education and Culture; 2) technological innovations impacting education practices, 3) innovations related to pedagogic philosophies and educational aims, 4) competence needs specified by and collaboration op-portunities arising from companies and working life.

The most essential external factor pressing the education system has in this decade been the Bologna process, to which the Finnish government is committed: the process has obligated universities to commit to the three-tier education system (bach-elor’s, master’s and post-graduate degrees), to the build-up of a new study credit system (bachelor’s 180 ECTS credits, master’s degree plus 120 ETCS credits) as well as to create a quality as-surance system and a related auditing mechanism covering the entire university.

Alongside the Bologna process, education has been influ-enced by the performance agreement signed between the Minis-try of Education and Culture and universities, which outlines edu-cational development goals. Some of the goals are tied to the goals defined within the Bologna process, some are more national by nature, such as shortening study times and decreasing drop-outs.

Internal pressures and opportunities most strongly pushing for development comprise diverse closed and open information

networks. In studies they facilitate communication, contacts, ma-terial supply and various educational practices. Additionally, the systematic management of education and pedagogic develop-ment has gradually morphed into strategic university develop-ment, as the interviews analyzed later in this report indicate. In this sense, a change in the operating environment and operating culture may also open up new avenues for development stimu-lated internally.

Educational practices are impacted by changes in learning theory, where the most prevalent fad currently seems to be the shift from teacher-led information transfer to learner empower-ment, where the teacher facilitates the learning process. (Looney, 2009, 4-5) The new types of learning environments described earlier and study projects at the university-industry interface support these types of learning philosophies. The scope of this report does not allow a systematic investigation of the volume in which the new learning philosophy has overridden the more traditional approaches nor whether such a change is needed. On the other hand, when examining the amount of contact teaching included in studies, we found that information networks played a huge role, one way or the other, in a majority of study programs: all programs resorted to them in their communication, some even had online projects – either individual or groupwork – or they kept in contact with their supervisor online.

Companies and working life in general exert development pressure through several channels. This report focuses on exam-ining learning environments at the university-industry interface, which provides a platform for diverse working life projects, such as product development or related research or pre-studies. In such programs, the university takes responsibility for the overall operational framework but companies contribute by providing assignments or by participating in projects. As examples of such activities we could list the Aalto Design Factory that was launched in 2007, Demola hosted by Tampere University of Technology and the University of Oulu, and the Fokusprojekt that is integrated into bachelor’s studies at ETH Zürich. The following chapter concen-trates on university-industry collaboration more comprehensively and examines the impact of strategic partnerships on methods of studying available.

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4.1 government InItIatIves on pedagogIc development

We stated earlier that the performance agreements drawn be-tween the Ministry of Education, or later Ministry of Education and Culture, and universities addressed central objectives related to degree and curriculum development. Formally the documents are agreements but the following objectives have been formulated as obliging all universities, which assumingly signals strong educa-tion policy intent on the part of the Government.

The agreement drawn for the term 2004-2006 states in-creased study completion and accelerated degree accomplish-ment as development aims. As methods, the agreement suggests improved planning, governance and follow-up. Further, the adop-tion of a personal study plan by 2006 is mentioned as an objective and the adoption of a two-tier degree system as of fall 2005-2006. The agreement for 2007-2009 still emphasizes accelerated and in-tensified degree completion and high-quality implementation of the new degree system launched during the term. As a novel aim, the agreement states the development of student and working life feedback mechanisms and national assessment of the degree renewal in 2009.

The agreement for 2010-12 states the following goals: cur-riculum flexibility, recognition of transferred credits, development of Open University course supply, and improved student selec-tion. Also this agreement notes that study processes should be enhanced to lower drop-out rates and to shorten study times and proposes the adoption of a national student feedback system in universities. The following contracts for 2013-2016 accentuate more strongly that “Universities are to leverage the quality of teaching and prerequisites for effective learning. The quality of teaching and student feedback also impact university financing.”

So what has been accomplished since the agreements? The new degree system is in place and has been evaluated. (KKA 2010b). Based on the evaluation, the renewal of engineering de-gree systems has led, in addition to the reorganization of study programs, to the development of study plans. Universities have also become more aware that development efforts have to be materialized also on grassroots-level teaching. On the other hand, the evaluation also emphasized the significance of pedagogic leadership. (KKA 2010b, 97) The report did not specifically de-scribe the reality in universities. At the same time, it conveys the same message as the agreements: universities have to take and have taken responsibility for pedagogic development, as much in concrete teaching as in operative management.

Audits have probably contributed to pedagogic develop-ment. They have set the deadline for the build-up of a quality as-

surance system and possibly strongly contributed to their build-up into a systematic entity. (Ala-Vähälä 2011, 65 – 68.) Additionally, they have a steering effect because pedagogic development is mentioned in auditing instructions as one aspect of quality as-surance. For example, the Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council stated in 2005 in its auditing instructions that “Quality Assurance covers all central aspects related to the planning, im-plementation and assessment of degree education” and “exter-nal stakeholders and students participate in quality assurance”. (KKA 2005, 28-29). In guidelines published in 2010 the pedagogic management view is highlighted even more strongly: “…(on the advanced level of quality work) the quality assurance procedures related to educational planning are systematic and established and well support educational planning. The diverse personnel groups and students are committed and extremely active in operational development. Also external stakeholders are involved in develop-ment efforts in a motivating way.” (KKA 2010a, 29.)

4.2 development efforts taKen by unIversItIes

How are the above-mentioned external development pressures seen internally in university operations? First, universities have been pushed to concretely react to external renewal demands for new degree systems and for building and systematizing qual-ity assurance systems. Second, universities have been forced to develop pedagogic leadership or at least they have become aware of this need. This is clearly manifested in responses sent by faculty members responsible for pedagogic development at universities:

”The newest new in my work has been the focus on pedagogic leadership and establishing and reinforcing the related role. There has been talk about it for long but now we’re actually doing some-thing about it.” (Aalto University)

”Pedagogic leadership: for the first time this fall “pedagogic lead-ership” was treated as a theme of its own right in an induction training organized for the university academic management. Time will tell how it will materialize as part of the university education reform.” (University of Turku)

In practice, pedagogic leadership has signified the build-up of the management system, allocation of the key roles, and es-tablishment of the new organizations. Most universities already have a unit responsible for pedagogic development: at Aalto the Strategic Support for Research and Education; at the University

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of Oulu the unit for pedagogic development, at the University of Turku pedagogic support and development, and at Åbo Akademi University the Learning Centre.

According to the respondents, pedagogic development has also meant a transition into a new management culture which sets strategic goals, operationalizes them through various opera-tive plans, and implements them in practice. When we stated above that systematic development is based on the new chal-lenges posed by resourcing and steering, we did not mean that the Ministry of Education and Culture would have specified in detail how teaching is to be developed. The responses rather sig-nal that universities have devised their own solutions.

”Tampere University of Technology has aimed to clarify role de-scription related to pedagogic leadership. All units have estab-lished a pedagogic development work group headed by the unit manager or vice-manager, responsible for unit-level development and quality assessment of teaching and supervision. Moreover, units and faculties employ contacts engaged in teaching-related processes such as curriculum design, follow-up, graduation, per-sonal study plans…” (Tampere University of Technology)

”The University of Oulu has conducted consistent work to enhance education issues together with the Rector responsible for educa-tion, manager of education services, education board, education Dean, education managers and people responsible for study pro-grams in order to raise the quality of pedagogic leadership and education. The related responsibilities are developed with the aim at the personnel responsible for education quality and produc-tivity within faculties and programs assuming actual authority.” (University of Oulu)

In practice, pedagogic management refers to the organiza-tion of pedagogic training, build-up of feedback mechanisms for students and working life, definition of education goals on a course basis and establishment of a credit award system for study modules in alignment with the new credit system. These practi-cal aims match the goals set for universities in the performance agreements and quality assurance.

”Pedagogic development is steered by the LUT strategy and in par-ticular the teaching policy. Pedagogic development has recently aimed to fortify especially the roles of the education program

leaders and their network and to systematically create knowledge for their disposal…” (Lappeenranta University of Technology)

”University-level activities have lately been extremely systematic e.g. to fulfill the ECTS-label criteria and to improve the quality of education. For example, the setting of learning objectives and improvement of education workload has been the responsibility or every teacher and program responsible and they have received individual feedback on their education offering and learning ob-jectives. In addition, external and internal audits and assessments have enforced improvements upon education quality, while lev-eraging the pedagogic skills of our teachers.” (University of Oulu)

Pedagogic development has not only translated into inter-nal changes in the management systems but it has also pushed education developers to network on a national level. Aalto Uni-versity coordinated a national-level endeavor (OTE) focused on education support and pedagogic development in engineering studies in 2008-201163. Their website describes the endeavor aim as the improvement of study goal attainment in universities of technology and universities of applied sciences, the adoption of new operating modes in engineering education and supervision, application of best practices, and standardization of the basic operations in different education organizations. All the Finnish universities except for the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University were involved in the endeavor.

As one of the project outcomes, the report ”Oppaiden opas – vinkkejä opetukseen opintopolun eri vaiheissa” (Translated as “Guide to guides – teaching tips for the different stages of the study path”) saw daylight.64 The report revolves around themes such as recognition and development of individual learning styles, recognition and acknowledgement of problems hurdling learning, support for individual and group learning, intensified studying of mathematics (Math clinic at Tampere University of Technology), remote learning by means of Adobe Connect Pro conferencing platform (Lappeenranta University of Technology), definition of learning objectives as part of pedagogic design, and supervision of assignments and theses.

Pedagogic development or streamlining is also connected to the aim of recognizing prior learning (AHOT). This involves a vast international program supporting lifelong learning related to the Bologna process. The European Union has published related

63 http://aaltopro.aalto.fi/fi/info/kehitystoiminta/ote/. 64 http://lib.tkk.fi/TIEDE_TEKNOLOGIA/2011/isbn9789526041865.pdf.

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policy aims and also the OECD has followed up on the subject. (Colardyn & Bjornavold 2004, Gutschow 2010)

The board of university rectors and the corresponding or-ganization, ARENE, for universities of applied sciences have pub-lished a memo and related recommendations on the issue of recognition. According to the memo, the starting point in recog-nition is the knowledge compatible with the degree or program aims, regardless of how the knowledge was gained. Knowledge acquired through education is mainly evaluated on the basis of study certificates. If the knowledge has not been acquired in an institution, it should, according to recommendations, be verified with a demonstration test. (Oppimisesta osaamiseen, 2009, 21.)

To enhance AHOT activities, a national project was set up, coordinated by the University of Turku.65 It should be pointed out that all the responses collected from the universities reacted to this particular recognition challenge. Most universities had pre-pared systematic guidelines to support recognition. At this point, however, we do not know more elaborately to what extent and how the practice actually works. It would be interesting to know, e.g., to what extent the AHOT procedure supports the recogni-tion and acknowledgement of knowledge acquired through other studies, work or hobbies.

4.3 educatIon feedbacK mechanIsms and teachers’ pedagogIc traInIng

Section 4.1 stated that the performance agreements between the Ministry or Education and Culture and universities require that universities develop a system for collecting feedback from their students and stakeholders. Also the auditing instructions by the Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council are in synchrony with this goal. At the time of this study, all the universities and universities of applied sciences had a student feedback system in place and they are currently transitioning to a national feedback system.66 Based on the auditing reports, feedback collection has shown varying success: on the one hand it was seen as useful, on the other, students were passive in contributing to it, which is why the results could not necessarily be benefited from in a systematic way.67

Based on the same auditing reports, the collaboration among universities of technology is active but often connected some-what unsystematically to management and operational steering, especially to quality management. (KKA 2008, 32; KKA 2010c, 21; KKA 2009, 38; KKA 2010d, 39.) The most outstanding exception is Tampere University of Technology that was praised in its au-diting report for its successful way of profiting from stakeholder collaboration. (KKA 2007, 36.)

According to the responses collected from universities, sys-tematic efforts have been put to enhancing teachers’ pedagogic skills. All the universities organize pedagogic training for their teachers: teachers can choose from 25-40 credit study modules and participation is voluntary. At least one university, Tampere University of Technology, follows the principle that a teacher hired on a long-term basis (at least 3 years) is required to complete ped-agogic studies of at least 10 credits if missing the corresponding qualifications. Pedagogic studies do not automatically influence the salary level but they can be taken into account when assess-ing the teacher’s job requirements and performance and that way they can have an impact. E.g. at Lappeenranta University of Technology, pedagogic studies are a way of earning extra points in the university salary system (YPJ) evaluation, thereby impact-ing the teacher’s salary.

All the universities stated in their responses that pedagogic skill is assessed in teaching-related recruitment. Aalto University articulated their aim as being to build two career tracks, the tenure track and the teacher track, and in the latter, pedagogic studies will serve as a promotion criterion on certain levels of positions.

”Aalto University has set up groups in its six schools assessing pedagogic skills and merits in recruitment. There’s no informa-tion available yet about the impacts of the assessment.” (Aalto University)

”We consider candidates’ pedagogic merits in all teacher recruit-ments. We aim at placing teaching at the centre in teachers’ work, alongside research. To evaluate the pedagogic merits, the candidates submit a teaching portfolio or other documentation on their teaching qualifications… Participation in pedagogic train-ing is a consideration when defining the level of job requirements for junior researchers.” (Lappeenranta University of Technology)

65 http://www.ahot.utu.fi. 66 http://www.rectors-council.helsinki.fi/ajankohtaista/YOPALA.html. Acquired 9.12.2012.67 Examples of somewhat critical comments can be found in the audit and re-audit reports of the Helsinki University of Technology (KKA 2008, 27; KKA 2010c, 19, 25.) as

well as the audit conducted at Lappeenranta University of Technology (KKA, 2009, 29). Examples of positive comments are listed in the audit report of the University of Oulu (KKA 2010d, 29-30.) Low response rate is mentioned in the audit report of Tampere University of Technology (KKA 2007, 30 – 31).

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”In practice, pedagogic qualification is taken into account in the individual salary increment and pedagogic training is increasingly appreciated in recruitment. If two candidates are equal in terms of their research merits and the other one has pedagogic qualifi-cations, he or she is more strongly positioned in the recruitment process.” (University of Oulu)

4.4 the newest new In teachIng

When education developers were asked to analyze the newest new in teaching presently, the answers were in short supply. The representative of Lappeenranta University of Technology empha-sized blended learning and remote learning solutions as well as project learning. The representative from Tampere University of Technology stated their aim is to increase problem-based learn-ing, experimental learning, such as simulations, and diverse project courses. In other words, the responses introduced the same forms of teaching and learning that were referred to earlier in this report.

Additional examples constitute the Intelligent Information Systems lab at Tampere University of Technology (IISLab) that designs various models and methods for online learning and teaching and examines their impact on learning and teaching. 68

Aalto University resorts to Second Life and its virtual worlds in its teaching. E.g. the LabLife3D study module allows the student to simulate lab tasks online and discuss the tasks with other stu-dents registered to this lab.69

4.5 summary of pedagogIc developmen

In general, we could conclude that during the past decade, peda-gogic development has been strongly influenced by external fac-tors, especially by the pressure from the Ministry of Education of Culture (Ministry of Education), which, on its part, stems from the Finnish commitment to the Bologna process as well as the new resourcing model founded on management by performance and objectives, which have also contributed to development aims concerning content. The renewal of the degree system, build-up of the quality system and implementation of audits and accredi-tations have in the past decade probably strained teachers, who have served as a channel for the development. The current dec-ade will likely show whether the work will materialize in the con-tent and quality of teaching and resourcing pressures. Alongside this, pedagogic training has naturally been developed and diverse systems supporting pedagogic leadership and studying founded on information networks have been built, and diverse learning environments have been designed and experimented with.

68 http://www.tut.fi/iislab/fi/tutkimus/verkko-opetus/. 69 https://sites.google.com/site/lablife3d/. 70 According to a study by Ala-Vähälä (2011) on audits, a significant share of universities and universities of applied sciences – also their management – views that the

investment put on audits and quality has exceeded its benefits. (Ala-Vähälä 2011, 51 – 52.) The study did not examine engineering education offered at universities.

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Where the report above focused on studies from the viewpoint of teaching supplied by universities, this section reminds us that a considerable share of learning and growing into an engineer takes place at the workplace or on the job, typically in a com-pany. Partly this involves training related to studies, partly a thesis or other project completed for the employer, and partly work-ing otherwise alongside studies. According to the feedback col-lected by Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland – TEK, engineering graduates work on average 18 months during their studies. More than half of the respondents stated that their em-ployment prospects after graduation were essentially enhanced by contacts gained in employment and internships during stud-ies. (Harmaala 2012, 7 – 8.)

It is therefore justified to say that part of learning and com-mitment to the engineering profession takes place outside uni-versity studies and the resources invested in them do not show in the calculations presented earlier in this report. And yet, they may have a huge impact on study completion and employment. This is why we should view training supporting studies and other employment as a special resource, even if it does not yield mon-ey to the university. On the other hand, companies also finance university activities, especially diverse research and development projects. Some of them hire postgraduate and basic degree stu-dents or provide them with other benefits.

To sum up, universities and companies operate in diverse ways at their common interface. This section reviews which forms of these activities are of strategic partnership by nature or other long-term and otherwise established collaboration, and which forms are random cooperation on a need basis. We examine strategic partnerships between universities and companies, co-operation related to career services, as well as endeavors at the university-industry interface providing projects that can be con-nected to teaching and studies. At the end of the section we re-view evaluations given by three large corporations (Kone, Nokia, Fortum) of the university-industry collaboration. Other data have been collected from printed sources and by interviewing univer-sity and corporate representatives.

5.1 strategIc partnershIps of unIversItIes and corporatIons

When categorizing the levels of cooperation sustainability, stra-tegic partnerships are located at one extreme and random co-operation endeavors at the other of the continuum. Chapter 2 revealed that funding from companies varied between 7 and 19 % (see Table 7) in Finnish universities of technology, which is big money. Overall the share of external, competed funding was in Finnish institutions higher than in most universities abroad. This is neither an asset nor a problem. More essential is the quality of funding, that is, whether the funding allows long-term research and other activities in alignment with the university profile. Long-term research endeavors and other partnerships represent one method of adding quality, continuity and systemacy to funding acquired from companies.

In Finland, the performance agreements drawn between universities and the Ministry of Education and Culture also state university collaboration with working life and other operators in the innovation system as an aim. (Performance agreement 2010-12 between Ministry of Education and Culture and universities. Corresponding agreement for 2013-16.) An identical aim is also highlighted in university strategy statements and similar docu-ments. E.g. the Aalto University strategy published in 2012 an-nounces that the University aims to make sure the knowledge it has created is transferred to society by establishing long-standing strategic partnerships with economic life and public communi-ties. The collaboration may also include research, education and art endeavors. (Aalto University, Strategy 2012). The University of Oulu strategy mentions strategic partnerships as part of the collaboration between universities, economic life and research in-stitutes. Additionally, we should mention one concrete example or a strategic alliance: the Oulu innovation hub, which also aims to cooperate in educational projects71.

Rector Markku Kivikoski from Tampere University of Tech-nology accentuates in his interview that the University has col-

71 The University of Oulu strategy is presented in the document http://www.oulu.fi/yliopisto/esittely/strategia. (Acquired 29.1.2013)

5. University-industry interface, co-existence and collaboration

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laborated persistently with companies throughout its history but the Ministry of Education and Culture only announced its support for such collaboration during the past decades. Strate-gic partnerships were included in the university strategy in 2009. According to Kivikoski, partnerships must be long standing and formed of a multitude of sub-projects, and funding must be adequate. Two-way human mobility is a characteristic of part-nerships, as is also the methodical completion of theses. These issues are elaborated on more concretely below through some case examples. The strategic nature of partnerships demands not merely perseverance and sufficient volume but it must also be meaningful for the university in terms of content. One of the operating principles of universities dictates that strategic partner-ships be founded on frame agreements that define the essential measures, timelines, patent rights and corresponding immaterial rights as well as financing principles. During the creation of this report, roughly half a dozen partnerships had been formed and their content was largely confidential. (Markku Kivikoski, email correspondence 18.1.2013)

The following depicts strategic collaboration through a few case examples. We focus primarily on the objectives set for the cooperation, forms of organization, and student impact. From Aalto University we would like to bring out the MIDE program and from Tampere University of Technology three different part-nerships: the Photonics Finland network which involves also other universities; the collaboration between the Faculty of Electrical En-gineering and Information Technology with different Nokia units, and the cooperation between the Department of Hydraulics and Automation with Bosch Rexroth in the field of digital hydraulics.

These partnerships follow extremely different structures: the MIDE program operates on a 20-million Euro equity capi-tal donated by industry and associations and has financed 11 vast and multidisciplinary research projects in 2008-2013. Pho-tonics Finland is a network of operators in the field of photon-ics (optics and optoelectronics): it comprises 10 research units and several dozen companies. The program receives its funding, roughly 300,000 Euros, from the Pirkanmaa Centre for Economic Development and the research units involved. The cooperation between the Department of Hydraulics and Automation and Bosch Rexroth is founded on a frame agreement which governs the essential operating principles for the collaboration but in-dividual projects are decided on separately. The university side is represented by Tuotekehitys oy Tamlink, the primary task of which is to support the industrialization of innovations created at the university and the related cooperation with industry. The collaboration between the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology and Nokia follows largely the same form

but the cooperation agreements with individual Nokia units have mainly been drawn directly.

As described above, the MIDE program operates on a fixed term but the same principles will be followed in similar programs in the future. Naturally the research endeavors involved in the program strive to open various avenues for the activities they have launched. (Interview Sami Ylönen) The funding for Photon-ics Finland will terminate in 2014 but the aim is to continue the network activities with the company funding (Interview Pekka Savolainen). The other two large-scale collaboration programs mentioned above are founded on long-standing collaboration, the practical implementations of which will be agreed on in in-dividual contracts.

In the MIDE program, the research aspect is accentuated most strongly. The program constitutes 11 long-term research projects pursuing the publicized aims at comprehensive research collaboration and multi-disciplinarity, also within the endeav-ors. The research projects have been screened from university-internal applications, with scientific quality and significance for Finnish economic life and society as selection criteria, instead of corporate knowledge needs or related interests. The purpose of all the endeavors has also been to substantiate teaching. The new knowledge created within the projects is anticipated to be transferred to teaching, either directly through researchers that teach, or then the data is collected for teachers to rely on in their teaching. (Interview Sami Ylönen)

The aim of the Photonics Finland network is to gather to-gether Finnish operators and their clients. The Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre, Pekka Savolainen, labels this operating mode as an open technology platform that serves its partners in ways preferred by the partners and draws from the existing innovation platforms that consist, for example, of Strategic Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation, and Protomo and Demola platforms. They all involve structures at the university-industry or university-society interface in general that support research collaboration, innovation industrialization and entrepreneurship. The network strives to lower the barriers companies and research institutes face in launching concrete co-operation and partnerships to facilitate technology transfer and to make the achievements in the area more visible.

The corporate cooperation of the Department of Hydraulics and Automation, as well as collaboration efforts of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, aim at solidifying their own research bases, which from the corporate perspective enables high-quality research and development and utilization of patented innovations at the university. Universities and corporations thereby share a common research interest but

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universities can benefit from the results elsewhere in their research and teaching, companies in their product development. Addi-tionally, companies can recruit the researchers and students that demonstrated their capability during the projects.

All the partnerships or networks mentioned above mainly focus on research or support for corporate product development. In spite of this, the partnerships yield direct and indirect gains also for students. The most essential indirect advantage must be the new knowledge and expertise stemming from the research and development that can be applied also to teaching. The individual projects within the MIDE program offer work to doctoral students and the program also includes supplementary education and student projects. Both the partnerships of the Faculty of Electri-cal Engineering and Information Technology and Department of Hydraulics and Automation ensure financing to master’s thesis workers and doctoral students. The interview respondents also felt that project work makes it easier for both engineering gradu-ates and doctors of science in technology to transfer from studies or post-graduate studies to working life. For the students of Pho-tonics Finland, the benefits materialized perhaps less directly. The endeavor and the resulting network aim to benefit from other structures between universities and companies (e.g. Demola) and thereby to offer resources to students for diverse study projects.

In sum, partnerships vary essentially both in terms of financ-ing volume and ways of organization. In some of them, funding is worth hundreds of thousands of Euros annually, in some even several million. Their activities involve setting up organizations supporting the new collaboration, like the case of Tuotekehitys oy Tamlink, networking among existing operators, and increas-ing the visibility of collaboration established over the years, and strengthening the institutional foundation.

5.2 cooperatIon related to career servIces

Strategic partnerships are not the only form of long-standing co-operation as universities can commit companies to collaboration also through other means. ETH Zürich exercises three essential forms of cooperation that strongly integrate companies. First of

all, the unit responsible for university career services has part-nered with more than 20 large corporations. In practice, this not only involves cooperation the way other similar units do but the companies have actually been committed through partnerships. The companies participate in the career centre financing and in exchange, they can systematically utilize the centre services. (Ge-schäftsbericht, ETH Career Center, Mai 2012.) The career centre services are in principle the same that other universities offer: in-dividual counseling, press conferences, fairs and other forums for employers and students to meet in.72

The Danish DTU has found a solution opposite to ETH. The university career services unit collaborates with companies and student associations but they operate independently of compa-nies and primarily aim to support students. (Interview Rikke Bjer-regård Jespersen) Deciding on the nature of the cooperation is a policy alignment: either the university and corporate units coop-erate at the same interface side by side, motivated by their own interests, as at DTU, or then they seek common denominators and build a common organization the way ETH Zürich has done.

Another example of the long-term corporate cooperation of ETH Zürich is its membership in the Unitech international network, which is a network of seven universities and more than twenty large corporations that e.g. selects annually a number of graduates for a one-year post-graduate education.73 This form of operation offers to the companies involved an opportunity to recruit competent students and potential managers. For the students, then, such post-graduate education offers a boost on their careers.

5.3 teachIng-related endeavors at the unIversIty-Industry Interface

The Fokusprojekt study module in mechanical engineering offers a third example of long-standing collaboration at the university-industry interface. The module constitutes a 20-credit program that allows students to cooperate with a company in a product development project. The module includes no formal contact teaching but the students have their university support and cor-

72 http://www.careercenter.ethz.ch/companies/partnership. Acquired 10.12.2012.73 The network includes the following universities: Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hoch- schule Aachen, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Technische

Universität Delft, Imperial College London, Politecnico di Milano, Paris Tech / Ecole Polytechnique, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg. Corporate members include: ABB, DaimlerChrysler, Degussa, F. Hoff- mann-La Roche, General Electric, Gruppo Falck, Heidelberger Druckmaschin-en, Hilti, IBM, J. M. Voith, L’Oréal, Mappei, Philips Electronics, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Schindler Aufzüge, Schlumberger, Shell, Siemens, STMicroelectronics, Sulzer, TPG (TNT Post Group, Unaxis, ZF Friedrichshafen. http://www.ethz.ch/about/publications/globe/archive/archive_bulletin/eth_bulletin_01_11_industrie.pdf. (Acquired 10.12.2012)

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porate sponsors at their disposal to carry through the project. The ETH Zürich annual report 2011 specifies that the aim of these projects has been to enable the genuine application of previously acquired knowledge in practice, rehearsal of groupwork skills and problem-based learning orientation. The projects are car-ried out as groupwork and they follow all the steps in a product development process: ideation of the concept, planning, design, simulation, engineering design, production and marketing. (ETH, Annual report 2011)

Corresponding modes of operation at the university-industry interface can also be found in Finland: Aalto Design Factory and the Demola lab in Tampere and Oulu also provide opportunities for development projects driven by working life. The ETH model perhaps differs from the Finnish examples in that it is integrated as an optional part into all the mechanical and process engineer-ing studies with a particular focus on the field. Also Aalto Design Factory supplies product development courses but its operating field is considerably larger as it offers diverse services to both start-ups and more established corporations when in need for product development services.

Also companies introduce projects to the university-industry interface: in 2012 Nokia, Microsoft and Aalto University together launched the 3-year AppCampus program financially supporting and coaching mobile application developers. The primary aim of the program is to develop commercially viable applications for mobile phones; participation does not earn credits for those in-volved. On the other hand, the program chooses to attract stu-dents as much as graduates.

5.4 unIversIty-Industry collaboratIon from the corporate perspectIve

The following data are based on a survey sent to three large in-ternational corporations: Nokia, Fortum and Kone. The survey focused on the organization, implementation and central goals of cooperation with universities. 5.4.1 Organization of cooperation with universities within the companies

Representatives from three large corporations (Nokia, kone, For-tum) were interviewed to analyze the nature of their cooperation with universities of technology and the way the cooperation is organized within the companies and with the universities. All

the three companies have divided their tasks and responsibili-ties in roughly the same way. In Nokia’s case the majority of the activities fall within coordinated cooperation. With Fortum, the coordination covers larger, recurring events that have centralized organization of attendance. Business units have the possibility to participate in other events, too, on a needs basis and they can acquire support for it from the human resources function. Also Kone follows this principle in its task division so that the most important fairs, guild agreements, employer image surveys and recruitment issues are managed in a centralized way. Both the corporate level and local business units regularly receive requests for cooperation and they are responded to according to the situ-ation and urgency of the demand. Business units operate inde-pendently in these cases.

For Nokia, university cooperation is organized into three sectors: research cooperation, development cooperation, and recruitment. The activities are coordinated on the corporate level but local units take responsibility for operative collaboration. The realization of operative goals is evaluated against criteria logical for each sub-area, in other words, research cooperation is expected to yield research results, in practice, publications; development cooperation is to bring new applications, and recruitment should manage successful recruitments.

At Fortum, university cooperation is focused more than at Nokia on recruitment and it is coordinated by the corporate HR department. The company has identified the universities that it re-gards as particularly important for recruitment. Fortum maintains a so-called ambassador network, which is a network of voluntary workers that can represent Fortum in different fairs and other simi-lar events. Fortum trains the ambassadors for the job, after which they are ready to attend roughly one event per year on average.

In all the companies the primary planning term is one year. On the other hand, Nokia emphasized in its response that they pursue long-standing cooperation with universities by establish-ing partnerships that extend over several years. Also the Fortum representative stated that they support long-term cooperation activities by drawing contracts with universities or engineering student guilds. Kone monitors cooperation needs internally on an annual basis and evaluates the situations and development needs accordingly. Also Kone draws cooperation contracts with engineering student guilds.

74 The following lists examples of projects starting in spring 2013: http://www.asl.ethz.ch/education/bachelor/focus.

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5.4.2 The most important forms of university cooperation

As noted in the beginning, Nokia’s cooperation is divided into re-search cooperation, development cooperation and recruitment. In terms of research cooperation, the basic unit of operation is typically a research project; in development work the modes of operation vary from AppCampus75 activities to individual student-driven developer communities supported by Nokia. In recruitment Nokia organizes or attends university visits, supplies visiting lecturers, participates in CV clinic activities, recruitment forums and offers internships. Nokia has positive experiences in attending projects coordinated by the Demola lab.

The most important forms of operations at Fortum include student excursions to their premises, recruitments forums, uni-versity lectures, as well as recruitment of summer trainees, final thesis workers and trainees. These are activities supported by uni-versities to provide services to companies in their own student and corporate service units.

Kone highlighted in its response that their preferred mode of operations centers on student projects that benefit students in their studies and entrepreneurship. Good examples of successful student projects include the Aalto Design Factory that was briefly introduced earlier and that Kone has supported for several years by allocating coaches to the projects.

Fortum participates in implementing some study modules, for example, their representative gives lectures on the nature of the energy field in an industrial management lecture series intro-ducing different industrial fields.

Kone is involved in the CEMS network76 (Community of Eu-ropean Management Schools and International Companies) as a partner. The network hosts 26 recognized universities and schools and aims to develop European education and management stand-ards by uniting the resources of leading universities and compa-nies. Kone participates in the selection of the CEMS students and is involved in cooperation projects enabling students to work in a business project for a company. The projects are spread over Fin-land, Belgium, Czech, the Netherlands, and Poland. Additionally, the corporate representatives participate in courses included in the study module by providing feedback on their implementa-tion. The CEMS network is in principle a network similar to the Unitech International presented earlier, with the exception that it operates in the field of management education. Aalto University School of Business represents Finland in the network.

5.5 actIvIty of unIversItIes and companIes at the common Interface – prelImInary summary

The corporate representatives were generally satisfied with their university cooperation in Finland. They mentioned especially the Demola projects and Design Factory product development pro-jects as good examples and forms of cooperation that yield prac-tical benefits.

The respondents did not bring up major problems in their responses. As an individual comment, however, someone raised possible shortcomings in university communication and project coordination, and uncertainty about the extent to which all par-ties have invested in the cooperation. In international cooperation, cultural differences may cause surprises, for example, conceptions about the quality of final theses vary from country to country.

Roughly speaking we could conclude that collaboration overall referred to co-operations at the university-industry interface where universities and companies operated side by side e.g. in recruitment and career counseling in Finnish universities. At times the collabo-ration materialized as joint projects in which universities and com-panies invested their own shares. The Fokus project at ETH is in this respect strongly university-driven, whereas the Aalto-hosted AppCampus was driven more by companies. Demola and Design Factory fall somewhere between these two: they were organized by universities but companies invested their own strong input and the results could be benefited from by students in their studies and by companies in their development efforts. Research-related partner-ships included both university- and science-driven ventures such as MIDE and contracted research and development projects that served the interests of both fronts. Also MIDE provided support to economic life but financing was based on donations and indi-vidual projects were screened from applications, which means they were not based on contracts between companies and universities.

The strategic partnerships in research and development be-tween universities and companies varied in volume and imple-mentation. The budget of the largest program, MIDE, totaled 20 million Euros, which means roughly 4 million per year. Also Nokia’s cooperation with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Infor-mation Technology at Tampere University of Technology reached a million-Euro scale according to the respondent. The volume of other endeavors was smaller. The joint projects pursued not just financial gains but the respondents also emphasized the benefits for teaching and research and improved employment prospects for engineering graduates and doctors in their transfer to industry.

75 See Section 5.176 http://www.cems.org.

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6. Conclusions

This study aimed to investigate the resourcing of Finnish and se-lected foreign universities offering engineering education, the al-location of these resources to teaching, pedagogic development, and collaboration with companies.

Before closer scrutiny of the study results, we want to remind our readers of some of the methodological choices underlying the study and their impact on the findings.

In the calculations, Finnish universities were investigated only for their engineering education whereas the foreign institutions were treated as entities by addressing all their education. This raised the key indicators for the Finnish universities and corre-spondingly deteriorated the results for the foreign institutions as they included also less expensive educational fields.

The calculations focused on comparing total financing. Since Finnish universities typically operate more than their foreign counterparts on competed financing, external funding increases the size of the academic community, primarily the number of re-searchers working on a project basis but does not increase “direct” pedagogic resources. This is why the level of resourcing compared to the amount of students reveals more accurate information re-garding the Finnish situation.

When comparing the student / teacher ratio, this study relied on the total number of academic faculty. This may enhance the results for the Finnish universities.

After these provisions, the findings can be outlined as follows:

Educational financing

1. The financial operative volume of Finnish universities offer-ing engineering education has developed more slowly than in most of their foreign counterparts.

2. Resourcing compared to student numbers is on average poorer in Finnish universities, with the exception of Aalto / TKK and Åbo Akademi University. In these two universities, the positive ratio is at least partly accounted for by the high level of competed research financing, which, however, does not directly benefit teaching.

3. In some Finnish universities, resources compared to student numbers have grown faster than the average. This has result-ed both from an increase in resourcing and from a decline in student numbers.

4. The annual fluctuation in the operations of most Finnish universities has been aggressive compared to their foreign counterparts, and this cannot be explained for by large mergers.

5. The share of competed financing is higher than in most com-parison universities abroad. The related benefits or drawbacks could not be systematically analyzed in this report.

Resources allocated to teaching

1. With the exception of the University of Vaasa, all the Finn-ish universities ranked below the average on the resources / academic staff ratio.

2. On the other hand, when comparing workload, that is, stu-dent number or student flow to the number of academic staff, the situation of Finnish universities seemed relatively good as the number of students was relatively small, but the comparison of university total funding to student number or flow yielded no similar outcome. The paradox may be ac-counted for by the majority of university staff being hired for diverse research projects without involvement in teaching. This means universities employ a vast amount of researchers in different projects the individual funding of which is minor.

3. When monitoring how much teaching is actually offered per bachelor’s or master’s degree, we found great variety. This makes further research necessary to investigate whether this has an effect on teaching and learning outcomes or the progress students make.

Pedagogic development

1. During the past decade, educational development has been strongly impacted by external pressures especially from the Ministry of Education and Culture. These pressures are asso-ciated with the Finnish commitment to the Bologna process as well as the new resourcing model based on performance management and management by objectives, which provide a framework for also content development in universities.

2. The renewal of the degree system, build-up of a quality assur-ance system and implementation of audits and accreditations have in the past decades probably consumed a significant share of teachers’ work time and channeled the development efforts in their direction. The current decade will hopefully materialize the gains in pedagogic content and quality and resourcing.

3. In addition, universities have invested in pedagogic training and built diverse online systems for pedagogic leadership and study support, as well as designed and experimented with different learning environments.

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Collaboration between universities and companies

1. A considerable share of learning and assuming an engineering identity takes place at the workplace or while working, typi-cally in a company. Partly it stems from study-related train-ing, partly from thesis work or other project completed for the employer, and partly other learning on the job alongside studies. Examples of such learning identified in this study in-clude Demola at Tampere University of Technology and the University of Oulu, and Aalto Design Factory. All the three corporations in our case study, Nokia, Kone and Fortum, collaborate systematically in training and recruitment with Finnish universities of technology.

2. The Finnish university-industry interface hosts a rich collec-tion of collaboration forms. Partly the variety stems from universities and companies co-existing in the same field and collaborating. Good examples include recruitment, career counseling, working life activities and thesis assignments. Both sectors have their dedicated units and the collabora-tion is well established. Also student unions are active in the efforts. Party the collaboration involves joint educational projects or projects designing products or business ideas. These types of cooperation forms comprise e.g. of the ETH Faktorproject, the Finnish Demola lab and Design Factory introduced earlier, and in a way also the AppCampus venture organized by Aalto, Nokia and Microsoft, which is carried out separately from studies but which students can rely on when designing business ideas.

3. The strategic partnerships between universities and compa-nies analyzed in this report varied in terms of objectives, vol-ume and implementation. The budget of the largest program totaled 20 million Euros, which means roughly 4 million per year. Also Nokia’s cooperation with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at Tampere Uni-versity of Technology reached a million-euro scale according to a survey respondent. The volume of other endeavors was smaller. The joint projects pursued not just financial gains but the respondents also emphasized the benefits for teaching and research and improved employment prospects for en-gineering graduates and doctors in their transfer to industry.

Generally speaking, collaboration in research and development is considerably popular in the field of technology. The joint projects in research and development often involve also educational aims. Case studies do not allow us to evaluate to what extend the col-laboration is strategic by nature and supports mid-term or long-term central goals of the universities and their corporate partners, and what type of measurable goals companies and universities set for their partnerships. It would be important to investigate how well the somewhat differing interests of universities and com-panies match or whether there is any mismatch. These provide important topics for further study.

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Appendix 1. Survey directed to Fortum, Kone and Nokia staff responsible for university cooperation (within HR) .

Survey to companies regarding university cooperation 1. How has your company organized its university cooperation

(especially in terms of engineering education); who coordi-nates it and what types of objectives have been defined?

2. What types of activities are included in the coordinated col-laboration and what forms of cooperation do the different units implement ad hoc based on their own needs?

3. What are the most crucial forms of cooperation? Your com-pany assumedly introduces its activities to students, recruits trainees and orders theses but what other forms could you list?

4. Does your company engage in collaboration agreements with universities? If yes, what forms of cooperation do they include?

5. Does your company participate in education and devel-opment projects organized by universities and companies jointly in Finland or abroad (e.g. Aalto Design Factory, Tam-pere University of Technology Demola). If yes, what type of projects do they implement? If you have knowledge of such projects, how would you evaluate their outcomes?

6. Continued from 5: Can you name a best practice of successful collaboration with a university providing engineering educa-tion?

7. What kind of benefits do you expect the contacts and col-laboration to yield?

8. What types of problems are associated with educational col-laboration with universities?

9. In which direction do you anticipate your cooperation with universities to develop (in Finland and abroad)?

10. What else would you like to share regarding educational col-laboration with universities?

Thank You!

Appendix 2. Email sent to people in charge of pedagogic development in universities

Message 15.10.2012 I am conducting a study as an assignment from the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries, Academic Engineers and Architects in Finland – TEK, institutions supplying higher engineering educa-tion, and the Ministry of Education and Culture on the financing of engineering education and financing alignments in teaching. According to Johanna Naukkarinen, you are in your unit the per-son with expertise in pedagogic development, which is why I am contacting you. If you wish to forward the survey or later mes-sages to someone more appropriate for this occasion, please let me know the contact details.

In this study I intend to examine three themes related to re-sourcing and their utilization:

1.) How systematically do your units develop teachers’ peda-gogic competence and how much does such competence show in recruitment, salary level and career prospects?

2.) Do you have systems in place for recognizing knowledge ac-quired on the job (as part of the degree)?

3.) What in your opinion represents the newest new currently in pedagogic development? I would prefer advancing so with this question that the representative of each university drew a quick estimate of their own innovative methods and then I would conduct another survey round to ask you to evaluate how familiar you are with the innovations of other institu-tions.

Are you ready for this? No need to send your responses to the questions yet, you will receive a more detailed questionnaire at the end of the week. Even then you do not need to elaborate on all your opinions but it suffices if you send me the related documentation.

Kindest regards,Timo Ala-VähäläFinnish Institute for Educational ResearchJyväskylä University

Message 19.10.2012 I have now established a contact with all of you, except for Åbo Akademie University, which I will try and reach by phone early next week. I already received responses from Aalto. Based on our phone conversations, I need to specify the questionnaire in the following way:Question 1. As before: How systematically do your units develop teachers’ pedagogic competence and how much does such com-petence show in recruitment, salary level and career prospects?

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Question 2. As before: Do you have systems in place for recog-nizing knowledge acquired on the job (as part of the degree)? I know the status at the University of Oulu as they have adopted the AHOT system but I would like to hear also about the related practical implementations.Question 3. This needs to be specified as follows:What represents the newest new currently in pedagogic devel-opment? What measures are being taken to support pedagogic development, what systems have been built up or are being built up to support the student’s study process and what types of new pedagogic techniques or other corresponding innovations are being pursued?

I would prefer collecting your responses, compiling some sort of systemacy from the outcomes and sending it once more for you to review. This will allow also other university representa-tives to evaluate whether they are working on similar innovations.

With collaborative regards,Timo Ala-VähäläFinnish Institute for Educational ResearchJyväskylä University

Appendix 3. Questions addressed to Rector Markku Kivikoski (Email)

Email 3.1.2013

Hi,I am conducting research on the financing, teaching resources and corporate collaboration in universities of technology. In addition to Finnish universities, the study examines seven universities of technology abroad. The first version of the report is ready and I can send it to you for review upon your request.

My aim is to add to the report knowledge about the strategic cooperation of universities with companies (for endeavors that provide work and study opportunities also to students). Man-ager Mervi Karikorpi from the Federation of Finnish Technology Industries advised me to contact you in order to identify a good practice from your university and acquire more information about it. This is why I would like to send you a few questions and to collect more detailed information from the person responsible for the program.

Kindest regards,Timo Ala-VähäläFinnish Institute for Educational ResearchJyväskylä University

Email 11.1.2013

Hi, I formulate the concrete questions as follows:1. How long a tradition in strategic partnerships with compa-

nies does your university have?2. What types of objectives have been set for the partnerships

(general objectives, targets e.g. regarding the amount of fi-nancing and / or number of partners)?

3. Could you name 1-3 partnership endeavors that I could con-tact for further investigation?

Regards,Timo A-V

Appendix 4. Questions addressed to profes-sors and unit managers involved in the partner-ship endeavors:

1. What is the structure of the partnership, who are involved and how is the cooperation organized (contract, common organization, something else?)

2. What does the partnership aim to achieve? What are the anticipated benefits for the university, for the companies involved?

3. How is the partnership project (or other structure) resourced, how do the companies involved contribute, how does the university contribute? Has the duration of the project been predetermined?

4. How does the partnership benefit post-graduate students? 5. How does the partnership benefit basic-degree students? 6. If a brochure or similar document has been drawn to describe

the partnership, could I have it as an attachment or web link.

Tekniikan akateemiset TEKRatavartijankatu 2, 00520 Helsinki

puhelin 09 229 121www.tek.fi

Teknologiateollisuus ryEteläranta 10, PL 10, 00131 Helsinki

puhelin 09 19231www.teknologiateollisuus.fi

International comparison of engineering education.

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