Evaluation of Government’s key projects for higher education 2017–2022

The final seminar of the Evaluation of Government’s key projects for higher education 2017–2022 was held on 17.8.2023.

• Press release
• Summary

Between 2022 and 2023, the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) implemented a national evaluation funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture with the aim of assessing the impacts and effectiveness of the higher education development projects (Key project 3) and teacher education development projects (Key project 1) funded by the Ministry. The evaluation was aimed at forming an overall picture of the situation by producing information on the implementation of Key projects 1 and 3, and the impacts and effectiveness of their results and model of development by Key projects. In addition, the aim was to produce information on the functionality and sustainability of the development model selected and issue recommendations for the method of developing higher education and teacher education in the future. The evaluation of Government’s key projects for higher education 2017-2022 provided information for the focus area of Karvi’s evaluation plan on supporting continuous development.

The members of the planning and evaluation team were

• Helka-Liisa Hentilä, Professor, University of Oulu (chair)
• Harri Jalonen, Professor, University of Vaasa
• Emmi Lainpelto, student, Tampere University of Applied Sciences
• Pekka Risku, Director, Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences
• Kirsi Viskari, Vice President, Tampere University of Applied Sciences
• Kyösti Värri, Senior Advisor, Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities.

The target group of the evaluation comprised all Finnish education institutions that have been involved in higher education development projects (Key project 3) and teacher education development projects (Key project 1).

The evaluation was carried out in three phases according to the table below. Several methods were used to collect the evaluation data. Also, the data were collected in three stages, in which the following phase complements the evaluation data obtained in previous ones. The data collection was partly carried out together with the Evaluation of the state and reform of higher education pedagogy.