With the Big Wheel reformation, teaching at the University of Helsinki will be reorganised. From the start of the academic year 2017-2018, the courses will be given within the framework of the new programmes and the study directions (specialisation options) within them. With the new system, students will belong to one programme at a time: a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral programme. The transition period will continue until 2020, so current students may select whether they want to follow the old or new system until then.
The schedule for building the new programmes is tight, because they will also form the new subjects for application, and the application subjects for academic year 2017-2018 will have to be announced by early summer 2016. The deadline for planning the new application subjects at our faculty is set at 4 December 2015.
Some provisions have been set for the new education programmes. There will be around 140 programmes at the university, of which 50 are bachelor’s programmes, 60 master’s programmes, and 20-30 doctoral programmes. Here, we will concentrate on the bachelor's and master's programmes. It has been decreed that at least 40 students should be admitted to these programmes annually (and 30 should graduate annually). The minimum for the master's programmes can be somewhat flexible, if there are good reasons. The bachelor’s programmes will mainly be given in Finnish, while the master’s programmes will mostly be international (given in English). All actors have been tasked with mapping their teaching over department and faculty lines, in order to remove redundancies and build inter-disciplinary programmes.
From our department, Professor Jyrki Kivinen and Head of Studies Kjell Lemström are members of the faculty’s Big Wheel committee. In addition to us, the head of the department, the professors in charge of sub-programmes, and representatives of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics have participated in the intensive discussions on the coming formation of the new programmes. Based on these discussions, a few suggestions have arisen, which I will now present:
Our current bachelor’s programme forms a natural basis when creating a new bachelor’s programme in computer science. In addition to our own programme, the plans include participating in the new bachelor’s programme being prepared at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics (working title: bachelor’s programme in mathematic sciences), with study directions in at least mathematics, statistics, and economics. In this programme, everyone has to take 25 + 35 credits of compulsory mathematics, and 25 + 35 + x credits of their chosen study direction (where x = 15 – 25). Since most of the students in this programme will take some computer science courses anyway, it seems quite natural to take part in this programme with our own study direction with some of the more theoretical computer science courses that will be compulsory. In this way, we would also gain students with a strong base in mathematics for our more theoretical master’s programmes.
In the same way, we could build a master’s programme, where the current sub-programme alternatives could be the basis for the new study directions, along with the current data science programme. The latter programme should be implemented in cooperation with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, which would allow us to cross the lines between departments at this level, as well. In addition, we are planning to include the statistical machine learning headed by Professor Jukka Corander (possibly as its own study direction). This outline, at its simplest, has been illustrated in the figure below. The colour codes have been used to illustrate how the current departments would participate in the production of the above-mentioned programmes. Please note that the names of programmes and study directions are still only working titles.
In the second plan, the current master’s courses are divided into two programmes: The master’s programme in computer science, and software systems (see image below). The following considerations support this model: 1) The master’s programme in software systems being given in Finnish (the other programme is in English), 2) there is no plan for direct transition from the bachelor’s programme in maths to the master’s programme in software systems, 3) it is challenging, to say the least, to find courses in common for these master’s programmes (there should be some courses in common in every programme), 4) there are already enough students in the software systems programme to fulfil the size provision for the programme, and 5) both programmes would have internationally known names, so that external applicants would be sure to find them.
The last outline is the most complicated. It entails that we would have three master’s programmes of our own, and a part in an external master’s programme. Professor Veli Mäkinen has discussed the establishment of a shared master’s programme with the people in charge of biometry and bioinformatics at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, as well as relevant programmes in Viikki and Meilahti. If it is established, the (computational) bioinformatics study direction headed by Veli would join this programme (which might naturally also happen with the previous outlines). In this outline, the study direction for networking and services forms its own programme. This would be possible with a slight increase in the number of students in this programme. Professor Sasu Tarkoma will consider whether this could happen by e.g. increasing our cooperation with the physicists.
For the moment, our department has not taken any decisions on the future programmes, and members of staff have the opportunity to influence them. You can present your own ideas to the professors in charge of study directions or directly to me.