On the importance of libraries

The one institution that I have most respect towards is the library. It is a symbol for the progress we, humans, have made. Libraries have always played an important role in education, democracy and freedom. The libraries must be free and independent in order to fulfil best the needs of the society they serve. It scares me whenever their independence is threatened, either by way of censorship or cutting funding or by setting limits on which publications the library can buy with state funding.

In Estonia from this year, public libraries (people’s libraries) have to spend 50% of their state funding on specific Estonian publications, as directed by the state. This has been the result of a minor culture war in Estonia waged by our Minister of Culture Rein Lang against books written by Barbara Cartland and the like. These state mandated, so-called cultural publications, are prizewinners, somewhat elitist works who are rarely read otherwise. Although I can detect some sort of a good intention in this action, I cannot in any way support or agree with it. Even though it is not full-blown Orwellian censorship, it still stems from the notion that the people are dumb and the government is smart and people need to be told what to read. It also means that especially those people in rural areas who had grown accustomed to reading recent bestsellers are no longer able to do so, which is a shame.

It is early to tell what the impact of this decision is, but my guess is that people will use libraries less, because books that they want to read are not there. With dwindling numbers come more budget cuts and reduction of numbers of libraries and soon we might end up with a situation in which this important network of local libraries is no longer there, depriving people of an important service. This means also that fewer children go to the library and appreciate its value.

If the government really wanted to help libraries to perform better, then they should encourage the transfer to and accessibility of digital publications. They should provide better tools for digitizing existing content and create a legal framework where this can be accessible. This should not only be limited to books or periodicals, but also music, films and other important arts. The information society has provided us with incredible possibilities for enjoyment of culture, all kinds of culture, by everyone, but sadly much of the content is locked away due to draconian and outdated intellectual property laws (I know first hand what are the expenses involved in accessing academic journals). In order to make libraries more relevant they could be made into zones where all this culture and education is accessible by all for free.

Estonian Higher Education Reform and EU internal market free movement rules

There has been a lot of debate in the Estonian society regarding the draft higher education reform proposal which is currently considered by the Parliament. It is based on free education for all competent students, a rather populist election promise of the conservative coalition party. There have been numerous concerns raised regarding the draft, ranging from it actually limiting access to education and hurting quality, but it seems that these arguments do not stand in the face of determination of the current Minister of Education and Research, Jaak Aaviksoo (the same guy who is responsible for the horrible Freedom Monument on Freedom Square).

The basic aspects of the reform are reform of funding of universities by making new result oriented agreements for receiving state funding (which is a good thing) and banning universities from taking any tuition fees from students who complete their studies in due course (which is a bad thing in my opinion unless the state is willing to provide the same amount of financing students paid before). Thus, funding of higher education is decreased.

The issue I wanted to point out regarding the reform relates to the fact that only studies that take place in Estonian are funded by the state. This language based restriction seems to me to be in contradiction to free movement rules of the EU (and I doubt that it could be objectively justified in this scale). The European Court of Justice, while agreeing that every Member State has the right to organise educational system in their countries, has stated that they must observe EU law when doing so:

The Member States are thus free to opt for an education system based on free access – without restriction on the number of students who may register – or for a system based on controlled access in which the students are selected. However, where they opt for one of those systems or for a combination of them, the rules of the chosen system must comply with European Union law and, in particular, the principle of non-discrimination on grounds of nationality. (C-73/08 Bressol, p 29)

In the Bressol case Belgium limited access to medical or paramedical programmes to only residents of Belgium, because a lot of students from other EU countries wanted to study there. The ECJ found that this was indirect discrimination based on nationality and this contrary to the Directive 2004/38/EC guaranteeing free movement rights. The court was presented several justifications for this by Belgium, most notably a justification based on risk for public health, which was ultimately left for the national court to decide.

It is correct that the proposed Estonian system is pretty unique and comparable only to the Czech Republic where free higher education is available if it is in the Czech language (based on studyineurope.eu). Although there currently are no further judgments on this from the ECJ, it is something that should be looked at. Language-based discrimination in tuition fees could be found not justified if the actual content of studies are essentially similar.

Truths and lies

Two different media stories have almost monopolised Estonian public discussion lately: the opinions of Jaak Aaviksoo regarding the need of the state to hide some truths or even lie for self-preservation purposes and the more recent brouhaha surronding possible doping use by Estonian cross country skiier and two-time olympic medalist Andrus Veerpalu. In addition to that I became aware of how easily malicious rumours can spread, when Tallinn Law School (where I work) became target of misinformation campaign this week. All those seemingly different things have one thing in common: they relate to truth, and acceptability of lying.

Speaking the truth is closely related to trust and transparency. Governance needs trust and transparency to be democratic and legitimate. Professional sports need the same values in order to preserve the notion of fair play and to attract interest of supporters. It would be difficult for me to place trust in an educational institution or people involved in higher education that resort to lies and dirty tricks to achieve their goals.

In the long run honesty is still the best policy, although in the short term some people might think that desperate or extraordinary circumstances merit spreading of lies. These people are wrong, because the short term lies create long term distrust and we need to have a society where there is less distrust and more trustworthiness.

Stable and prosperous democracy can in my opinion be built only based on mutual trust and trust of important state or private institutions. It is a shame that some people in our society still are willing to sacrifice these things for personal short term gains.

On funding of higher education in Estonia

One of the reasons for the structural weakness of the Estonian Higher Education system is the way it is financed. There are a number of state-funded places at universities, which are given according to a service contract to be agreed every year based on what the state determines is necessary. This is based purely on the lobby work universities are able to do at the Ministry of Education and Research and on how well they have implemented the directives coming from the Ministry. In that sense the system of higher education in Estonia is based on a model of state planning (just like it was in the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic).

Recently the system was modified so that now the state “orders” for example an x number of social sciences (business, law, etc) students from one university and y number of social sciences students from another. Again, these numbers are based purely on favours, ministerial whims and how a given university stands in the eyes of the Ministry officials. Therefore, when before it was purely up to the state to decide how many lawyers it orders, then now it also depends on the position of the law department within the university (if it is powerful it gets more places, if not then not).

There is fierce competition to certain state-funded places (business, law, IT), whereas certain curricula remain unfulfilled (mostly “hard” sciences). All other students pay themselves fully for their studies and there is a lot of them.

Now, these are the consequences of this system:

1. The students are completely left out of the decision-making on where state funding goes. The students vote with their feet and choose areas of study they think are more benefitial for them in the future. The state funding completely ignores this will of the students and keeps funding areas where no-one wants to study, forcing students to study things they do not want, provided that they cannot afford to pay for the studies themselves.
2. The universities suffer as poor quality and unnecessary departments and faculties are kept afloat by state financing. There is no incentive for improvement, which results in poor quality graduates.
3. In departments/faculties where there is interest by the students, but no or little state financing this means also loss of quality as the departments must relay to a large extent on self-financing students, who work at the same time or who have been unable to get to the few state-funded places.

The OECD has recommended already in 2007 in their review of the Tertiary Education in Estonia that student enrollment should be the basis of higher education strategy:

The Review Team is of the view that Estonia should ensure that any new financing arrangements continue to allow student demand to have a significant influence both on the overall size and shape of the higher education system in Estonia and provision at the institution level. This would entail the state financing institutions on the basis of actual enrolments or graduations rather than purchasing, in advance, places in particular fields and levels of study. Following this line of thinking, we believe that the Estonian government should reflect on extending public subsidies to all students in properly accredited courses at private institutions (once the quality assurance arrangements planned by the 2006-2015 Higher Education Strategy are fully operational) as well as allowing the total number of students receiving public support to be driven by demand rather than rationed.

/–/

Moving to a system in which student demand is the main driver behind the distribution of students between and within institutions would also necessitate the reconceptualisation of the contract between the government and institutions. In a sense the state would move from being a purchaser of a defined set of services to that of a funding partner with students. The Review Team believes that this role remains compatible with a broadly contractual relationship with institutions in which institutions are expected to meet certain requirements particularly regarding quality and orientation to the labour market. In this context, the focus of the contract should move from the specifics of the places purchased to the broad objectives which the government would like institutions to achieve. The negotiation of the contract could become a process whereby the government as a funding partner engages in a strategic discussion with institutions of higher education about directions and means.

The current system of financing simply reinforces the existing structural faults and keeps the higher education system severly handicapped. The universities remain state-oriented, not student-oriented.

Those students who can afford to do so do not go to study what the state wants them to study in order to sustain certain areas of teaching (certain professors), they will pay themselves or go abroad.

Without excellent and motivated students there is no room for competitive research either, and the more bright people move away and contribute to the research of some other country, the poorer Estonia will remain, both academically and economically.

Estonian Higher Education is systematically flawed

Estonian higher education is deeply, systematically flawed. The greatest flaw is not the lack of cooperation among Estonian universities, but rather forced cooperation where competition should be encouraged. Dreams of one and only “Estonian University” or the University of Tartu’s dream of them as the only university in Estonia will end up a nightmare where there are no substantial universities in Estonia at all.

The main problem of Estonian universities is the small pond effect. Universities, and Ministers of Education seem to see only Estonian higher education space, where they should see at least European or global higher education space. Today’s academic world is not constrained by boundaries and the more time we spend closing our higher education space off for foreigners the worse off we will be. If we want our universities to be European class or regional centres of academy we need to do the following things:

1. Forget about Estonian-language higher education: This single biggest thing holding back Estonian universities is the lack of teaching and studying in English. Using English as the only language for studies will be an enormous benefit. Today, Estonian institutions of higher education work against, not towards internationalisation, mostly due to the lack of English language skills of faculty and staff.

2. Stop discriminatory practices in admissions, forget about state exams: SAIS only for Estonians with Estonian ID cards has perhaps made it easier to administer the admissions process, but it has also separated Estonians from other students.

3. Admit the failure of state regulation, give universities their freedom. Forced migration to 3+2 is an ongoing disaster that has resulted in terrible loss of academic quality and competitiveness. The same applies to all state mandated reforms that no one really needs. At the moment Estonian universities are extensions of the Ministry of Education and Research, they are being pushed and pulled by different reforms and practices. Forget about state funded places, forget about state funded research libraries: just give the money to universities so that they can be responsible and choose their own means of providing access to universities for disadvantaged students or decide which books, databases etc to buy.

I think it is worth to try this radical new approach instead of driving off the cliff, but faster.

Solutions for Estonia’s economic problems

This post is partly inspired by Edward Hugh’s post on Latvia’s economic problems, where he offers three solutions (after devaluation happens, which he thinks is inevitable):

I think this deterioration needs to be addressed as soon as possible, and I see three large issue.

i) Productive capacity needs to be increased substantially. This means increasing the labour force, and this means (as outlined in the World Bank Report, From Red To Grey) facilitating large scale inward migration. Given the serious political implications of encouraging ethnic Russian migration into your country, I see only two viable source regions, the Central Asian Republics in the CIS, and Sub. Saharan Africa. Possibly this solution will not be widely popular with Latvian voters. Well, they do have the right to choose. Your country can take the measures needed to become sustainable, or you can watch it die, as the economy shrinks, and the young people leave. That, I think, is your choice.

The other two measures you need to take are contingent on the first being implemented, since without the first measure you will simply not dispose of the economic resources for the other two.

ii) A serious policy to support those Latvian women who do wish to have children. But with major financial advantages, not half measures, and propaganda stunts. You need policies that can work, and I know plenty of demographers with ideas.But this needs money. Important quantities of money. And gender empowerment, right across the economy, at every level. We have formal legal equality in the labour market, but evident biological and reproductive inequality, in that only one of the parties gets to bear the children. The institutional resources of the state need to redress this imbalance.

iii) Major reforms in the health system to address the underlying male life expectancy problem. You can only seriously hope to raise the labour force participation rates at 65 and over if people arrive at these ages in a fundamentally healthy condition. In economic terms, simple investment theory shows why this is the case. A given society spends a given quantity of resources on producing a given number of children, those who have citizens who live and work longer evidently get a better return on their investment. If you want to raise Latvian living standards, you have to raise the life expectancy. And this apart from the evident human issues.

I think all of this applies to Estonia as well. The last two are already somewhat handled in Estonia, there are programs which support young families and although male life expectancy is still rather low, more effort is being put in sport promotion programmes for general public, healthy lifestyles are promoted etc. The nordic nature of Estonians (and the Finnish role-model) might also contribute to helping Estonians live longer, although at the moment it looks rather bleak.

I tend to agree with Edward Hugh that many of the problems of Estonia’s economic crises have been caused by lack of people. This was true during the boom times (the labour force shortage helped to push the salaries up quickly) and is even worse now that many truly skilled people move abroad where they are offered better salaries and ways of self-improvement, leaving in Estonia a mass of former construction workers and factory workers who have been laid off and who are probably unable neither to leave Estonia nor re-qualify for another job. Meanwhile, it is still difficult to find well-educated people in many areas, regardless of the growing unemployment rate.

A part of the solution is to train those people at our universities. Fortunately, Estonian public policy of pushing people to go to professional education and not to universities has failed and people are still going to universities en-masse (this year’s admissions has been the highest in recent years). It seems, however, that the funds used for the ill-fated push for professional education could have been used better at supporting universities. It is questionable if the big public universities themselves, still bureaucratic behemots with Soviet-era legacies, can provide the skills, knowledge and values required to educate them. The universities could do more with continuing education as well, offering a range of specialised courses for those seeking to update or refresh their skills and knowledge, but not willing to spend time (and money) on full Master or Doctoral programs.

The second part of the solution is increased immigration of unskilled workers from other non-EU countries. This means a change of paradigm in mainstream politics and suppression of strong nationalistic moods prevalent in the society. None of the major political parties in Estonia recognises or debates is the need to increase immigration. Walking around even in Tallinn’s streets it would be very difficult to spot any people who are non-ethnic Estonians or Russians and are not tourists. This is probably due to the effecient work of the Citizenship and Migration Board, which seems to pride itself on keeping the foreigners (at least those not from EU or US) out. One only needs to look at the low numbers of accepted refugees and asylum seekers for this.

Where should the new immigrants come from? The most obvious (and easiest to stomach politically) might be immigrants from Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other countries which many Estonians have compassion to. I am not so sure that a large scale inward migration from Africa will be as welcomed, although sooner or later there will also be more ethnically diverse mix of people in Estonia as well.

In order to have a long-term and sustainable solution instead of the race to the Euro at all costs, immigration policies must be reviewed and inward immigration increased gradually.

1 September

Today was the start of the new academic year. Interesting things happened:

• attended the opening ceremony at the university, which was nice, especially the music;
• signed the new employment contract;
• had for breakfast and lunch cake which was offered on the occasion of the start of the academic year;
• had two introductory lectures for two courses I will teach (after a break in teaching since march);
• went cycling at kakumäe, came back to Koidu home with the bike in rain, got very wet;
• koidu home was still rather cold, and I was cold and wet (see above) so decided to heat up the sauna, went to the sauna, enjoyed it.

Religulous

Bill Maher’s brilliant new film Religulous is coming soon. Will it be the God Delusion of documentary films?

It look promising, looking at the trailers. Visit disbeliefnet as well.

Welcome to our new TUT overlords

It was made public today that International University Audentes is to merge with Tallinn University of Technology, if everything goes according to the plan, then by the end of this academic year. Although I do not really know what will happen, I am cautiously optimistic as having a backing of a larger educational institution allows to develop faster and further. I do not want to say anything bad about Audentes, so I will not say anything.

One thing that irritates me is the constant name changes of this institution I am associated with. Concordia International University Estonia’s assets were bought by Audentes Mainor University (itself a result of several mergers), which was renamed Audentes University, with the international studies institution named International University Concordia Audentes. Then the two institutions were put together under the name International University Audentes, a name which I personally despised. So now a new chapter will begin, if everything goes according to plans.

The draft of the new laws on higher education

If anyone is interested, then here is the new draft on the quality reform (in Estonian). Pretty interesting.