Language Technology Education and Research in Finland

The Finnish universities have moved over to the Bologna style Bachelor's and Master's degrees, a BA/BSc degree typically now consists of 180 ECT credit points, and a MA/MSc degree amounts to additional 120 ECT points. All new students follow the Bologna style curriculum, and the students who started earlier may complete their studies according to the previous scheme where the measure was one study week which is roughly equivalent to 2 ECT credit points. The main difference between the old and the new degrees is that the bachelor's degree studies shrunk somewhat and the master's degree studies expanded respectively. At the same time, the Finnish universities adopted a common assessment scale (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) which makes it simpler to transfer credits because previously many Finnish universities used traditional and idiosyncratic scales.

PhD education arrangements in General

PhD studies in Finland were not affected by the Bologna process, and they consist of (1) the PhD dissertation which has to be a published work but may be either a monograph or a collection of refereed journal/conference articles plus a summary, and of (2) some course credits (old credit = 40 h worth of work = 2 ECT credit points). Typically this means 10 old credits worth of courses in the major and 20 credits worth of other courses but the principles may be vary in different faculties and universities. The motivation of these courses is to facilitate the writing of the thesis.

Subject matter is mostly acquired during the Master's level studies. In language technology (LT), though, these credits are often directed to courses to fix the gaps of knowledge of the students come to language technology from near by disciplines.

The students are expected to complete their PhD studies in 4 years (of full time work). It is a common goal of the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Finland to try to lower the age at which students complete their PhD degree. In the past, PhD studies depended heavily on one's personal investment, but the Ministry of Education established a set of PhD graduate schools with a salary for the students for at most four years.

KIT Graduate School (KIT-GS)

A national PhD Graduate school of language technology in Finland ( KIT-GS) with 5+1 PhD full-time students (5 with a salary from the Ministry, 1 from NorFA): University of Helsinki (2+1), Helsinki University of Technology (2), University of Turku (1), and additional 10 PhD students (without a salary and therefore mostly part-time). The KIT-GS started in 2002 and three students (of the 6) have already completed their PhD degrees by September 2005. The KIT-GS got the funding for a second period for 2006-2009, for five student positions.

KIT-GS has a steering group (board) which approves the curriculum and selects the PhD students to be enrolled. The Academy of Finland gives some additional funding for traveling and other expenses. Nordic GENST-NET project covered much of the expenses of the international courses (traveling, accommodation, teaching honoraries) in 2002 - 2004.

Each student in the KIT-GS is enrolled in his/her home university as a PhD student, has a primary supervisor there and graduates according to regulations of that university. For the PhD students KIT-GS means (a) availability of courses relevant to the PhD studies, (b) a team of PhD students with similar interests which can assist each other in various ways, and (c) easy access to secondary supervisors.

The students at KIT-GS participate in planning its courses, one per semester with international teachers and open to Nordic and Baltic PhD students.

Education for master's degree

Language technology can be studied as the major subject at the University of Helsinki (UH), Department of general linguistics, and as a minor at several universities (at least in Joensuu, Tampere). Students at Helsinki University of Technology (HUT) can specialize in language (and speech) technology at the final stage of their studies.

Master's level studies are expected to take 5 years (including Bachelor's level studies of 3 years and Master's level on top of that for 2 years). It has been common that these recommended times were exceeded, and the official policy now is to improve the efficiency of Master's level studies.

From the Autumn of 2005, a national Master's Degree Program for Language, Speech and Translation Technology was established, and it attracts students with a Batchelor's degree from linguistics, computer science, etc.

KIT-Network

Since 2001, there has been a National network for language technology education (KIT-Network) shared now by 10 universities, and the special funding by the ministry of education continues to the end of 2005. KIT-Network is coordinated by the Department of general linguistics at the University of Helsinki.

Students within the KIT-Network may freely take courses from other participating departments and this is now a fairly concrete possibility, as a significant part of the courses are offered through the Internet using email, www and videoconferencing techniques. The present goal is that students at each of the participating universities can *complete the basic studies (20 credits) in language technology,* partly by web-courses and partly by traditional local courses.

After the special funding from the Ministry of Education comes to an end in December 2005, the participating universities will continue the cooperation as a part of their normal budget and operation, maybe at a reduced scale.

Research in language technology

The research in the language and speech technology emerged in the 1970ies and was established in the early 1980ies at various academic institutions. The research groups were first fairly isolated from each other but many of them quite successful. See also the Finnish Language Technology Documentation Centre, FiLT.

Tekes (the Technology Fund of Finland) has financed a research program USIX (2000-2003) and another called Fenix (2003-2006) where language technology has been one of the main themes. In USIX there were some 10 language technology oriented research projects and in Fenix there are several. This initiative has been parallel in time with the educational networks, and helped in bringing the research groups into contact with each other. Several of the projects are shared by researchers from more than one university.

Some of the areas of research and expertise:

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