News in English

Students do not show up at Language Centre courses

A growing number of students have failed to turn up to Language Centre courses this autumn. Some students enrol on both optional and compulsory courses for their degrees - but they do not necessarily turn up even the first time.

‘Students have told us that they want to ensure their admission to at least one language course. This makes us think that we really should try to inform students better in future about the selecting criteria to the courses’, says Antti Hildén, Director of the Language Centre.

Students signing up in vain are indeed the main reason for enormous queues to the language courses. Doing this may cause someone to be left without an admission to a course, as filling the courses from the waiting list does not always work out.

‘Teachers are attempting to scrape classes together using the waiting list, but students on it have often made other plans already. It is therefore often profitable to pop into the first class to check if there happens to be room. Groups are also often filled up slightly over the maximum from teachers’ initiative.’

People often drop out just after the beginning of the course as well. Sometimes a high number of students can go missing in the middle of a course, without telling anyone they are attending to leave.

‘Sometimes it happens that a guest lecturer or “a suitcase professor" is visiting students’ own departments, thus rescheduling their timetables. For instance, we arranged a Swedish class and a great deal of students enrolled. When the course began, almost twenty students did not appear - that means, in practice, the whole group’, says Hildén.

After next summer there will not be any teaching according to the old degree system, hence many students are striving to graduate before then. The Language Centre is therefore attempting to arrange more compulsory Swedish and English courses, so that getting a degree would not be held back due to a missing language course.

‘Further advanced students might already be panicking slightly, and have been enrolling to several courses to try to ensure that they will definitely be accepted to some of them, in order to attain their degree on time.’

Tamy gets multi-party Executive Board once again

Different coalitions of representatives are again being well presented in the Tamy Executive Board for the next year. In their meeting of 21st November, the new Council of Representatives elected Anna-Mari Huhtinen from the group Puhuvat Humanistit as the chairperson of the Executive Board. There were no competitors. Huhtinen was a member of the Executive Board in 2006, and this year she has been the Council chairperson.

The Council chairperson election did not appear much more dramatic. VivaÂ’s (Green Left) Marja Väätti won against Sofia Vikman from the National Coalition students by 31-8. Juuso Järventie (Medicine students) was elected as the first vice chairperson and Jarkko Forsberg (Economics students) as second vice chairperson.

The Council is TamyÂ’s highest decision-making body. The Board, for its part, exercises executive power. In practice, the Council and the Board often agree on issues, due to all Council coalitions having a representative in the Board.

University and Tamy settling for the holidays

Friday 14th December will be the last day Tamy offices are open before the Christmas holidays. They will be open again after Epiphany, on Monday 7th January.

The second study period ends 14th December, ending the whole autumn semester. The third period will start the spring semester immediately after Epiphany.

However, it will still be worthwhile to be alert after the Independence Day on 6th December, as enrolling on the Language CentreÂ’s courses for the third period already starts on Monday, 10th December. Students will have time to sign up until the 2nd January.

Tamy buys a new van, old one goes to redemption

After almost a one-month break, Tamy once again has a van. The previous Nissan Primastar had only been in use for a year, before being wrecked in a crash at the end of October and redeemed by the insurance company.

The new car, a 2005 Toyota Hiace, has been driven 52,000 kilometres. The car cost 20,650 euros, which was paid with the insurance money from the Nissan.

Tuition fees already on their way

‘Some of the Erasmus Mundus programmes are already chargeable. It will therefore be easy to progress to charging all the foreign degree students, later followed by Finnish students. This will probably not happen during the next government rule, but perhaps during the one after that.’

These are the views of Doctor of Administrative Sciences and senior assistant Jussi Kivistö, from the UTA Department of Management Studies. According to him, society can no longer afford free education, as the bigger generations retire and thus raise the expenses of other public services.

“The atmosphere in the EU has changed to favour universities that charge for education. What also affects the situation are the emergence of the global educational market and a general change of attitude towards providing public servicesÂ’, Kivistö argues.

One of the most important goals of the Finnish student movement in recent years has been maintaining free education. Simo Autio, Chairman of the Tamy Executive Board, strongly believes that future tuition fees are not guaranteed to happen.

“Fees are a political issue. If we find free education important, we shall have to find the political will to maintain it. And even though it is possible to predict that fees will evolve as according to some kind of a gateway theory, it does not mean it is impossible to stop more fees appearing.’

Primarily, tuition fees of higher education have been planned for students coming from outside the EU and the EEA. This practice is in use in several European countries.

It has been suggested in recent years that Finns should also pay for education. Due to reductions in universal welfare services after the 1990sÂ’ depression, higher education can now become a target for reductions.

Economic life has especially been encouraging the change. Universities themselves are also interested, as tuition fees would mean extra funding for them.

Furthermore, the Chancellor of the University of Helsinki, Kari Raivio, proposed a 3,000-euro annual fee last spring. This would be a so-called shadow payment, from which students could be freed if they manage to graduate in the predetermined time frame, calculated to be free. After this, it would be possible to continue studying on oneÂ’s own expenses.

‘Due to disciplines and people’s life situations being different, schemes like this would probably bring inequality’, Autio thinks.

Kivistö has reservations about RaivioÂ’s suggestion, as he has not given any decent arguments for the amount of the fee. Kivistö himself prefers the Australian income-contingent loan scheme.

‘Students pay their tuition fees after graduation as a tax which amounts to 4-8 percent of the person’s income. The annual payments depending on student’s discipline add up to 2400-5000 euros a year, meaning that studies will be paid back in 8-12 years.’

Translations: Varpu Jutila