University Education in a Bilingual Country: The Case of Finland

Focusing on the situation of Åbo Akademi University, a Swedish-language higher education institution in bilingual Finland, this article discusses the problems of operating higher education institutions in two or three languages in a country in which 11 percent of the population are Swedish speakers and 89 percent are Finnish speakers, with many who are bilingual. Finland has two monolingual Swedish-language universities plus a monolingual School attached to the bilingual University of Helsinki. In addition to the latter, five other institutions, four of them highly specialized, are bilingual. The remaining institutions are monolingual, operating in Finnish. Most of the Finnish higher education institutions are increasingly offering programmes in English. Institutions offering courses in Swedish co-operate among themselves in the provision of full course programmes. The three universities in Turku, where Åbo Akademi University is located, co-operate in offering joint programmes requiring students to work in Swedish, Finnish, and English. Although multilingualism works well in Finland with a minimum of friction, the author concludes that a monolingual university, if affordable, is the best safeguard for minority linguistic rights.