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…including massive lay-offs at the University of Helsinki (including some academic staff). More on what's going on in Finland here. (Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointers.)
Comments are open for more links and information from readers about the situation in Finland.
Anyone interested in Finnish education might consult the work of Pasi Sahlberg. It is troubling to think that the very foundations of teacher education seem to be comprised in a country that leads the way when it comes to philosophically sound educational practices.
As a tenured member of the Theoretical Philosophy subject at Helsinki, I can confirm that the situation is indeed dire, but at this point it's unclear what the damage will be like for academic staff. Small subjects are at a greater risk, but in the case of philosophy, only the Swedish language philosophy subject (teaching in Swedish; two permanent members of staff) has been flagged for potential termination (I don't have the latest info, but this was the line that the Dean of Arts & Humanities was pushing in December). At Helsinki, we currently have three separate philosophy subjects: Theoretical, Social & Moral, and Swedish.
However, at the same time we are in the process of renewing all the Bachelor's and Master's programs across the University and the proposed scenario now is that we will combine all the philosophy subjects under one BA program. We'll know more shortly, but my own feeling is that this is a good thing for philosophy at Helsinki in the long run — the potential loss of permanent staff notwithstanding.
In general, the philosophy subjects have been doing well at Helsinki, helped for instance by our good record in publishing and securing external funding. So hopefully we'll be able to recover from this soon. I am however worried by the unavoidable loss of administrative staff, as this will likely cause problems both for the remaining administrative staff as well as the academic staff. But hopefully we'll be able to recover quickly…
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