INF greetings, autumn 2022
Spring and Summer 2022 have visited us, and now we look into the new semester 2022–23. So, it is time to look back and forward, and it is time for me to write the formal informal update from the programme director’s perspective. See the previous one here.
Oh, in the case you were wondering, these updates (and most comms) are in English because not all of us are Finnish speaking in the INF community.
My perspective into the past months is perhaps thinner than usual due to my shortish sabbatical (I worked only one-day-a-week). Nevertheless, we had the annual Summer Survey, and of course, I’ll share my thoughts about the future.
Summer Survey Results
This was the 4th year we have had the survey. The point of the survey is to give our students yet another channel to air out their opinions, and literally to grade the programme.
This year we had 79 people answer the survey (+2 from last year) and the programme got an average grade of 4,00. Below you can see the grade distribution this year, and below that, also the grades from past 4 years. We are on a slowly downwards slope, but the grade starts with a 4, which is fantastic. Let’s see if I can say that a year from now :) All in all, a clear majority are happy with the programme, and that is important!
Typically our 1st year students give us a better grade, and this time they gave an average of 4, the same as the average. Our 2–3rd year students gave 4,04. So-called nth year students gave 3,81. And our MSc students 4,71. There were two people identified as “other” and they both gave a 3. In sum, we should pay more attention to our nth year students (probably BSc).
Looking into the free text answers probably gives a better view on what the respondents were thinking about. You can read them all from here (I have made my best to make sure they are absolutely anonymous). I also made an effort to answer all the criticism. Have a look, there is probably loads of answers to you in that document.
Welcome the new cohort — IV’22!
Whatever we do as a programme there is always a new cohort of students coming in September. Which means that roughly 17% of us are brand new people! Because the number of students remains about the same, it also means that about the same amount of students have graduated in the past year (not actually quite true). However, we as a community change annually quite a lot.
This Spring we had even more general applicants than before (i.e., everyone who marked INF as a choice). The number of 1st choice applicants dropped a little (perhaps due to the new Engineering Psychology BSc).
This year’s phuksit already broke some records. For the first time we had a clear majority in women: 62% of the cohort. And also, we had 36% of the people coming outside the capital area (it has been circa 25% for ages). Hurray for diversity!
See the graph below. I think we have now reached a comfortable number of applicants, and I would be happy if we can keep these numbers. To put it in another way: our programme is very attractive to young graduates from “lukio”.
The year ahead of us
In my personal opinion, this semester 2022–23 is pivotal for the INF programme. We are still facing the long-term problem of being understaffed. Compared to Fall 2018 (when I started), at the end of the semester 2023 we have five less faculty members who were committed to INF: 3 tenured professors and 2 senior lecturers. And there has been no new additions. In other words, we are 5 faculty members short. Also, our student intake has grown almost 1,5x (62 IV’22 phuksi) yet our people and resources have shrunk.
Needless to say, on all other metrics our programme is doing brilliantly: attractiveness, student feedback, employment, and graduation time & GPAs. Also, if you look at the master’s thesis topics, our students are working on a variety of contemporary and highly interesting issues and problems.
Recruiting new faculty members is almost matter of life and death for INF, and I’m working on it together with the department heads (CS & DIEM) because only departments can recruit faculty. I’m also raising the flag on our other people’s (study coordinators & planners) work growing as the number of students grow.
The matter of the fact is that INF can’t survive in the long term unless departments commit to building research and faculty based on the theme of INF: building the digital society in a sustainable way. This is the number one task for the coming year, and together with the departments we need a plan, actions, and results. We must anchor INF into faculty to have a future in which we can keep the programme(s) active and progressive.
