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.

Comments

This would n'er happen to a government-run college

[mi]

University of Helsinki will reduce staff by 980 people, with 570 being laid off by the end of 2017

This would never happen to an institution owned by the benevolent government of a nice, progressive country with constitutional protections for earning a living wage. Oh, wait...

Re:Refugees

[roman_mir]

Actually I think Europe should load all of those refugees onto barges and bring them to the USA because it is America that created this entire mess starting looong loooong time ago, at the very least in 1953 when it deposed a democratically elected president in Iran and replaced him with a fucking religious king.

Then it was Afghanistan and a bunch of other situations where USA meddled with the world by feeding snakes that eventually always got out of control.

Christ, the things that get modded up on /...

[rsilvergun]

This is just a response to low oil prices. Finland sells a lot of oil. The correct response would be to borrow until the price of oil went back up (which baring a miracle it will when the Saudis give up trying to kill US Shale) then pay down the debt with the oil profits. But can't dip into those sweet, sweet profits just to keep the general public's standard of living up now can we?

Re: how is this relevant to /.

[bill_mcgonigle]

I want my fellow citizens to be able to get higher education and health care and other base necessities of modern day life regardless of whether or not they were born to a rich family.

That's very admirable - and of course you should back your goals financially.

And I want people to continue to graduate without student debt weighing them down so they can actually spend the money they make and thus help the economy.

You're making an "unseen error here - the money that pays for the education instead of loans has to be taken out of the economy a-priori and you're ignoring its economic benefits. Given the time-value of money it might well be huge. Education is an economic good, and like all valuable economic goods it has a multiplicitive effect. If there should be forced public funding of education then why not housing or food, which have an even higher multiplier? If housing is backed by loans, like most economic goods, education can be too.

Now access to financing may well be an issue in Finland, but giving rich people free stuff paid for by the middle class is hardly an egalitarian solution.

This system works

It achieves certain outcomes at the expense of others that you're ignoring. From what I'm reading here, Finland's economy is tanking, necessitating these cuts, so that can't be the outcome you're referring to.

I'm paying for my past education and the education of the coming generations by paying across the board higher taxes than most people in say, the US- And I'm completely alright with that,

It's great that you're OK with what you're paying for - that means you would do the same thing voluntarily. But to see if the system is just, you must see what happens to somebody who is not OK with it. Will violence be uses against them if they choose not to participate? If so, you must be willing to engage in violence, killing people if necessary, for the sake of forcing OTHER people to pay for a high university-level education rate to achieve questionable economic benefits.

In the meanwhile, you should voluntarily donate personally to a fund set up for free education of foreign students.