How to Survive when Money Is Not Sufficient?

Finnish universities are gradually becoming dependent on funding from sources external to the annual government budget. A fair proportion of it is research money from research councils, and research and development work is also done for various government agencies. European Union resources are also tapped extensively. Moreover, a great deal comes from the private sector.

The proportion of external funding in university budgets mushroomed in the course of the 1990s. At the University of Jyväskylä, for instance, where the external funding was barely 5% ten years ago, it now reaches up to about 40%.

The deep recession in the early years of the decade, which resulted in cuts up to nearly 20% in university budgets in two years, left behind a budget gap, whose effects are sorely felt at universities.

It is true that the budgets have been restored to the early 1990s levels, but the same 20% is now paid in rent to the government estate company, which was created in the mid-1990s. This was not the case before the recession.

There are more and more university departments throughout the university system which cannot cover their regular expenses, even salaries of the tenured faculty and staff, with the money they receive from the university budget. And the future looks rather bleak: no real raise is promised in the coming years.

Departments have not got much choice as to what to do when their budget money gets short.

 

It cannot be right that institutions that have been established to serve the society´s needs in higher education and research find themselves in a situation where they cannot function properly without large quantities of external money, professor Kari Sajavaara writes.

Leaves of absence, longer sick leaves, scholarships received by faculty members, and (early) retirement may serve as first aid in some cases when savings are needed. But the result may be a serious dysfunction of the department: people who go may be faculty whose services are seriously needed for the running of the day-to-day business. Such a situation can be even more critical now when target figures for degrees have been raised very high.

The extreme, giving a notice, is not normally possible with tenured staff. Temporary contracts can be discontinued when they are closed. But there is the tendency for temporary employment to become permanent: after a few years, more or less the same rules apply as with tenured staff.

The by now common alternative is trying to tap external funding sources.

It is good that universities have learned to keep an eye on what goes on around them in their environments, but it cannot certainly be right that institutions that have been established to serve the society's needs in higher education and research find themselves in a situation where they cannot function properly without large quantities of external money. And not all disciplines are in the same position to be able to secure funding from sources outside the government budget.

There are some signs of there developing an upstairs-downstairs type of separation between regular staff and staff hired with external funding. Even if external projects are tightly controlled moneywise, the strict government regulations do not always apply in the same way as with permanent functions.

External funding cannot always be used to cover expenses arising from the department's basic functions. Overheads have been an exception, rather than the rule, which means that regular budget funding has been used to cover expenses arising from activities funded by external resources.

In humanities, in particular, small departments abound. The present situation may mean that heads of departments spend a great deal of their valuable time worrying about funding and seeking sponsors. It is time away from the serious business of a university department.

Some voices have been raised to the effect that quality of teaching and research may be seriously threatened. External sponsors have interests different from those of the university. Too high work loads may make faculty lose their control of the situation, or there is simply no time any more for quality control.

But there is also the positive side. In many cases, external sponsorship can mean a real boost to a department's teaching and research. It can open up new vistas which have remained unexplored, and even if the surplus money left over may be minimal, it may be sufficient to fill some of the sore needs in the department's expenses.

Kari Sajavaara is Professor of Applied Language Studies and Dean of Humanities at the University of Jyväskylä. He serves as Vice President of the Finnish Union of University Professors.