Dear Eduardo,
innovation university is just one of the working titles, and not even the most silly one... and unfortunately the spirit of Arts is certainly not the maing spring of the initiative, which has been launched outside the universities, in politics and in industry. The leading idea is obviously that when business, technology and industrial design are brought more closely together, Finnish industry will be served with more and better innovations. There may indeed be a point in this, although the fruits of a merger may take longer to ripe than the planners of the integration are expecting.
UIAH is by far the smallest of the three, less than 10% of the whole, so I'm a bit worried what will happen to them. And apparently the planners are really interested only in the industral design part of UIAH -- what about the more artistic parts, like cinema, photography etc.?
At the moment, the only concrete issue I know of is that a plan to intergrate the universities has been written down in the program of the new governement. Given that the governement is less than two months old, that may be the only thing that has happened this far. There will probably be some power struggle between the Ministry of Commerce -- who would like to have a say with respect to the new organisation -- and Ministry of Education, whose turf all universities are now, so who knows how fast the plan will develope.
best regards,
--Kari Kuutti
Dear Kari,
you asked:
"By the way, our new governement has a plan to establish a new
"innovation" university by putting together three currently
independent universities: Helsinki business school, Helsinki university of
technology, and University of Arts and Design. Any opinions if something can
really be gained with such an arrangement?"
In our Higher Education System, individually, the three Universities
could'nt be called University. In Portugal, an University must have, at
least 3 different Scientific Areas and 6 diferent graduation courses. Some
Universities are real confederations of schools and others a litle bit more
centralists. Obviously your designations are diferent. I know the structure
of UIAH of which I'm a great admirer. If UIAH were able to mantain its
philosophy and independence it seems a fair deal. Internationally you may
create a very strong case with the New University. I just find the title
silly. "Innovation University?" I would keep the name of University of the
Arts for the whole thing. Economics and Technologies are, after all Arts.
Lower arts but arts anyway ;-).
This is not the case in which the tecnical subjects are loosing aplicants
and need the fresh air of Arts, or is it?
Cheers,
Eduardo
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