Approved in a Board meeting on 20 August 2025. The statement follows the structure of the international strategy’s public consultation round.
We thank Tampere University for the opportunity to give a statement on its new Internationalisation Strategy Draft. It is important to hold diverse discussions that engage the entire university community on the steering documents of our university.
In order to foster openness, we hope that the comments received from the community are published on the Intranet of Tampere University after the commenting period has ended.
1. Vision: Building a Sustainable World Together
We support the vision proposed and the active role of the University in the global promotion of academic freedom and the openness of science. It is important to ensure that the vision is made visible also in practice and that Tampere University takes a considerable and active role in the fulfilment of the objectives set.
Value-based action means also the critical evaluation of one’s own activities and partnerships as well as the active measures taken in ending direct and indirect collaboration with partners that act contrary to one’s values.
2. A Flourishing University
We suggest that an objective regarding intervening in discrimination and preventing racism is added in to this section. The University must actively intervene in discrimination present both locally within the community and internationally and, via its own activities, act an exemplary actor in promoting activities free of discrimination.
We suggest that an objective regarding the supporting measures for integrating students is added in to this section. The University must offer a broad array of different supportive measures aimed at students, with which integration and attachment to both the academic community and the society encompassing it are promoted.
The objective mentioned in this section, “the entire personnel and all students have equal opportunities, regardless of language, to participate in different tasks and roles in the university community, including in university administrative bodies” is favourable, and there is a clear increase in the level of ambition in comparison to the present state.
In practice, the objective requires that the materials of all administrative bodies must be available simultaneously in several different languages and that simultaneous interpretation is available at meetings. This means a considerable increase in the University’s translation and interpretation resources. The objective is unclear on whether the entry refers to all languages used in the university community or only the languages currently used in the decision-making of the University.
3. An Internationally Respected Research University
We suggest that an objective regarding the University fostering and promoting the position of the Finnish language as a language of science is added in to this section. The position of Finnish-language research should not be undermined in favour of internationality. From a global point of view, the vitality of academic languages, even the smaller ones, and the promotion of high-quality research conducted in these languages are important. This means that it must be possible to study and research in Finnish in a Finnish university.
4. Educator of World-Changing Experts
We want to elevate the ambition of the strategy in relation to tuition-free education by suggesting that an objective regarding the abandonment of tuition fees for students arriving from outside EU and EEA countries is added in to this section.
The objective mentioned in this section, “we offer bachelor’s programmes conducted in English which create a clear path to master’s programmes” is favourable. A student must be granted a right to study for both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Relative to the time required for integrating and learning the language, a mere three-year bachelor’s programme is unreasonably short.
5. Strong Partner and Active Societal Advocate
The objective set in the vision regarding promoting academic freedom and open science should be seen more strongly in the objectives set in this section.
We suggest that an objective regarding taking an active role in protecting academic freedom is added in to this section. Tampere University must offer students and researchers who have faced persecution or violence an opportunity to continue their studies or research by founding a humanitarian protection initiative for this purpose.
6. Implementation and Monitoring
The indicators used to monitor the realisation of the strategy and the monitoring periodically done in the Management Group and the Board of Tampere University must be made visible to the entire university community. Open, critical, and diverse discussion on the implementation and monitoring of the strategy supports its realisation.
For more information:
Sanni Tyynismaa: Board member
sanni.tyynismaa@trey.fi, +358 44 729 3775
Ville Jäppinen: Specialist in Educational Affairs and International Affairs
ville.jappinen@trey.fi, +358 50 361 2849