Speaking in a YLE TV1 discussion programme on Saturday, Raivio said that a project to create an elite university in the country is lacking a solid base. It is his view that by international standards, the research being done at Finnish universities is only average.
A Ministry of Education task force has proposed that a new university be established in Helsinki combining the strengths of present institutions of higher learning in the fields of economics, technology and the arts.
The Chancellor of the University of Helsinki argued that research at the schools in question is not at the top of its class even nationally.
Raivio also commented on the number of students study for doctorates. In his view, the system of higher education in Finland produces too many doctorates. He considered this a problem especially in the field of medicine, where two-thirds of qualified physicians continue academic studies at the same time as basic healthcare services are suffering from a lack of physicians.
He was furthermore of the view that the network of institutions of higher learning in the country is too dense and overlapping, consisting as it does of 20 universities, around 30 universities of applied sciences and six university centres in a country of five million inhabitants.
This means that the individual institutions are too small and funding is divided up into too many small packages. Raivio noted that it is unreasonable to expect the universities themselves to initiate reforms that could undermine their own status.
YLE