Pertti Alasuutari: Universities are no ‘innovation factories’

The preamble to the Government bill concerning the new Universities Act assures the reader that the purpose is to extend the autonomy of the universities even further. In practice, however, the various elements of the planned reform add up to an attempt to turn the universities into ‘innovation factories’ under central government control, whose productivity will be further boosted by the introduction of hierarchical management and an emphasis on ‘strategic focus areas’.

For instance, the Ministry of Education recently put forward a requirement that all universities are to provide a more exact definition of their ‘focus areas’; the areas in question are to be described as concretely as possible and there can be no more than three of them. At any subsequent result negotiations, universities will then only be able to engage in negotiations concerning funding that focuses on those areas. This is ostensibly in the interest of eliminating ‘overlap’ and guiding the universities towards the areas of research defined for them. The Ministry of Education also appears to hold views of its own as to the division of labour between the Finnish universities, i.e. which ‘strategic focus areas’ will be approved for which university by the funding authorities.

In future, the new full cost model applied to research funding allocated by the Academy of Finland will also channel funding strictly into the strategic focus area of each university. Since universities are required to make a commitment to funding part of the expenditure for each project out of their own pockets, the ‘commitment by the site of research’ required for each funding application is no longer a mere formality. It is a strategic decision which contributes to streamlining the research and development work undertaken at each department and indeed at the entire university.

Such strategic choices require a hierarchical management model, something that the new Universities Act is about to fit us for. The rectors of Finnish universities are about to be given more authority than hitherto, and the Government bill also strives to add more external members to the university senates or boards. The business sector will be given more of a say when universities are made into foundations; presumably this will lead to increased efficiency in terms of ‘innovation activity’ that serves the business sector.

The Government bill concerning the new Universities Act further proposes that the period between performance target negotiations between the universities and the Ministry of Education could be adjusted so as to coincide with the Government’s term of office, in order to “strengthen political guidance”. In practice, this would mean that the political parties would agree on their ‘innovation policy guidelines’ in connection with the government negotiations, and universities would then be allocated funding for ‘strategic development’ on the basis of said guidelines.

Thus the university system is being turned into an innovation factory under Government control, in hopes that it will churn out prosperity for the nation. The powers that be also appear to believe that the best benefits can be wrung from the universities if research in, for instance, the natural sciences and technology can be focused exclusively on innovation-producing fields, while research in the social sciences is focused on finding ways of improving administrative efficiency.

There is one fundamental flaw in this vision of an ever more efficient university system: scientific breakthroughs cannot be predicted. When policy-makers claim to know where the next great innovations will emerge, that is surely more likely to be a sign that there is little more to be gained in that particular field, or that it is already being explored by far too many.

Rather than pursuing a science policy motivated by extraneous motives, why not rely on the ability of the scientific community itself to evaluate the scientific standard of various university units and to secure the continuation of basic research? In order to be successful, science must stand at arm’s length from political and economic interests; science is ultimately all about questioning the prevailing truths. In the social sciences, for example, this means that research cannot serve those in power, but has to keep a critical distance from whatever is taken for granted. Although usefulness is not among the main purposes of basic research of this kind, it may often prove more useful than research of a more practical nature. Perhaps, for instance, the worldwide economic recession that we find ourselves in at present could have been avoided if more economists had been inclined to doubt and prophesies of woe, while it seems that there were quite enough people inventing new derivative instruments.

Pertti Alasuutari
Academy Professor
University of Tampere