Universities face funding gap before 2024 budget increase

Science|Business 27 January 2022

A new political commitment to boost R&D spending from 2024 could help Finnish universities recover from years of unpredictable funding, but for the next two years the budget strains will go on, Paula Eerola, vice-rector at the University of Helsinki, told Florin Zubascu for Science|Business.

Political parties in Finland recently reached an agreement to raise public and private R&D spending to 4% of GDP by 2030, ending years of political infighting over how much the country should invest in research and development.

But the preliminary agreement is now pending final legislative approval, which is not expected until early in 2023 and would not come into force in 2024. Until then, the research and university sector faces further budgetary uncertainty. The risk of a cut in 2023 is quite high, said Eerola, adding: “That is something that we should absolutely avoid.”
Full report on the Science|Business site

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