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University of Helsinki To Lay Off a Thousand People (yle.fi)
jones_supa writes: University of Helsinki, the place where Linus Torvalds got his degree as well, will reduce staff by 980 people, with 570 being laid off by the end of 2017. In addition, the university will reorganize and incorporate certain divisions including continuing education. Professors, teachers and researchers are criticizing the cuts, which coincide with the university's administrative and educational overhaul. The staff cuts reflect the government's drastic funding cuts to education, which plays one part in the effort of trying to help the difficult economic situation of today's Finland. The university estimates that of the 980 positions, terminations during this coming spring will account for 570 positions. Of the employees to be made redundant, 75 are teaching and research staff and 495 other staff. The rest of the cuts will be spread over the coming years.
Just ask George Soros why he wants national borders (and therefore, nations themselves) destroyed.
People who meddle in the affairs of foreign nations deserve no less than the death penalty.
University of Helsinki, my heart cries.
In the US we have witnessed the rise of the "Administrative University".
The Administrative University exists without classes, without research, without service to anyone or anything.
The Administrative University has a state appointed Board of Regents, a President (The Champion of the Board of Regents), Vice Presidents, Vice Vice Presidents, Superior Lawyers, Middle Layers, Submissive Layers, Patent Office Administrative Staff, Provosts, Vice Provosts, Deans.
The Administrative University exists to feed itself.
Teachers? NO.
Classes? NO.
Research? NO.
The Administrative University exists for itself and nothing else because it syphons money from the State and Federal Governments.
The Administrative University exists to uphold the lifestyles of the Board of Regents and Their Champion, The University President.
The Administrative Staff are the human shields to endure the slings and arrows of sexual lawsuits and felony complaints against The
Champion of the Board of Regents, The University President.
Example: The University of Alaska
Ha ha
The Scandinavian countries are quite pragmatic when it comes to solving problems. Sweden did a turn towards the right in 2006 which served them very well. Finland will do something similar.
See, Finland is not that pragmatic. That's the main problem actually. The country has failed to perform the necessary agile moves, the ones that neighboring countries like Sweden and Estonia have done. We Finns just stand with mouth open and mittens in our hands, stare into the horizon and say "Gee, I guess we could do something about the problems. But not right now. And there are many regulations preventing change anyway, and we cannot quickly change those regulations either." There is a lot of the classic 1970s conservative old world stiffness still present. However, right now a lot of confidence has been placed on PM Sipilä and his government, so we'll see.
You clearly do not understand the context or the background to this, so allow me to explain why this is relevant. Firstly, the university of Helsinki is THE university here. Sure, we have a few other major ones and they're decent, but we're a nation of 5,4 million people, the university of Helsinki is the bedrock and pinnacle of our much praised educational system. Gutting it means they're making a huge dent in the higher education of the entire country. Secondly, the cuts are nationwide, they're cutting across the board from higher education, the university of Helsinki is just getting the hardest hit as it is the biggest.
But most importantly, this is about much more than the simple cuts themselves. This is about politicians fucking us over in every way imaginable and betraying their own principles on which they ran for the parliament in a record time. We had elections last year, and one of the biggest promises made by the winning centre-right coalition was that no matter how tough cuts they'd have to make, they'd stay off the education. Our current prime minister and minister of treasury even posed in twitter pictures with students with cards saying 'no cuts'.
35 days. It took 35 days from the elections to them start suggesting cuts. Then they introduced tuition fees for exchange students coming from outside the Union. Now, this raised concern since the worry was that once the concept of tuition fees has been introduced, the next step would be to start suggesting everyone should pay them. This is a major deal as universities have always been free to attend to for those who have the grades to get in. Without free universities, we likely wouldn't have risen from a fairly backwater nation that suffered a civil war and the 2nd world war to a first world post-industrialized welfare state in less than a century. Without free higher education it's likely we would never have produced people such as Torvalds, companies such as Nokia and Rovio etc. Free higher education is at the very core of what this nation is supposed to be built on, which is why it is in our constitution:
When they announced the cuts they promised they would never expand the tuition fees. Yet, unsurprisingly, one MP just proposed that today: the introduction of nationwide tuition fees and simultaneous cutting of student benefits. At the same time they cut the amount of corporate taxes MORE than they cut universities (the total combined cuts to education are about 600 million euros). They're literally trying to wipe their ass on the constitution that we have, pissing on a fundamental cornerstone of well being in our country, and lying through their teeth while doing so. They say they have to do these cuts to save the economy. But destroying the basis for all intellectual capital in this country is not going to do anything else than destroy the economy in the long term. But they do not seem to care. And to make matters worse, the universities appear to have given up any sort of resistance to this and are allowing this all top happen with very little protest.
In my life so far, never have I been so angry and sad at the same time, nor have I EVER felt this betrayed and fucked over by our elected representatives. They're a fucking national disgrac
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead