Planned reform of the Finance program and its admission system
Markus Mäkelä, Henri Putkonen
At Aalto University, significant changes are planned to the Finance degree structure and to the admission system, to take effect for those starting their B.Sc. studies in Fall 2027. An ultimate formal decision has not been made yet, but the plans that we have been made aware of have a conclusive nature.
With that, AFA’s Board has discussed the planned changes rather thoroughly and then engaged the Department for a dialogue with a small Board task force, in addition to receiving information via Aalto Finance. As a result, we have received and processed some valuable further information, as contained in a member email message of December 3 and its attachment, and we wish to point AFA’s members to that message and toward sending and addressing any comments as suggested there.
One key reason why AFA has, all in all, devoted rather much time for this process in the fall is that some changes may arouse interest in our members, or in AFA as a community, to the point of worry. What we can do is tell that the Board’s distilled questions received from faculty useful answers that do fairly well and fairly broadly satisfy our key questions on the most risky matters from notable major viewpoints. However, opinions in AFA’s board do vary as to whether the risk management plans in place by now are sufficient to mitigate some key risks, such as in terms of being backed up with sufficient resourcing. At any rate, risks always accompany big changes, and much seems to hinge here on the sufficiency of these mitigation efforts.
More information about the forthcoming changes and their thought-provoking aspects is below.
Changes to the admission system and to the degree structure
Students will from 2027 on apply to the Finance BSc degree program from high school or other preceding studies, based on records such as diplomas or SATs. No longer would the system involve the usual common entrance exam or the general School of Business-wide admission quota. Intake would broadly remain at the current level.
Finance will become an independent degree—its own bachelor’s degree program under the School of Business, no longer just a major.
The program’s curriculum will be more financially-focused, with truncated basic business studies. The curriculum will center more on Finance and closely related fields from start, offering more specialization. The traditional element of general business studies (currently taking 1.0 years, and earlier taking 1.5 years) will be truncated, but not particularly much, according to plans.
The Department plans to safeguard sufficient “business wellroundedness,” as AFA has termed it, via designing the general business studies curriculum accordingly. Further, smaller and useful changes will come on the course level. All B.Sc. program teaching will now be given in English.
As AFA understands it, all key goals of this broad change effort revolve around developing the pool of graduates from Finance yet further. This would happen both by influencing the pool of applicants and by how the new program will educate them. Increasing the levels of foreign students further is one of the goals, and that has potential to enrich the program still for everyone. A supportive goal is to further increase the Finance curriculum’s global visibility, reputation, and competitiveness, something that can feed the flywheel where the various spokes of this transformation would bring speed and add to the qualities of the graduate pool, and also to how the graduates and alumni are perceived on the global and local job markets.
Risks, their mitigation, and AFA’s role
Various outcomes that can be negative for the entirety, and whose likelihood the university needs to cognizantly manage, have been identified by AFA, as detailed in the member email message. The risks broadly fall into three categories: (1) that the changes would actually not attract an even better applicant pool than now; (2) that contacts between Finance students and the broad Business-School student community would lessen; and (3) that narrower basic business studies could yield a worse degree, which points to an express need for broadness in the elements that remain.
While we at AFA’s Board are reassured in parts by clear faculty confidence in these needed management efforts, and recognize that faculty have closer knowledge of the current applicants’ generation than the average alum does, the caveats stated above do stand.
AFA’s plan, therefore, and given the conclusiveness of the plans that AFA learned of and has investigated, is to keep emphasizing the value of the necessary actions, which include the need for marketing communications efforts and resources. Any commentary from our members as per our December 3 message can help with this.
The current situation includes, of course, many positive aspects to support any coherent change effort: Aalto’s Finance program will be like Aalto’s current Finance major—a leading university-based business program in the country and in the Nordics, with an internationally very good platform of teaching and research excellence, built over decades, from which to develop further.
Markus Mäkelä is the President of AFA. Henri Putkonen is the Editor-in-Chief of AFA Quarterly.