É«É«À²

I had a somewhat transformative wake-up call roughly 10 years ago. I had grown frustrated with having to give presentations on the importance of AI without fully understanding what AI actually is and how it works. I talked from scripts written by others, unsure whether what I was saying was factual. I had gotten used to delegating learning downwards in the organisation. I had gotten lazy.

I decided to do something about my lack of understanding. I enrolled in a machine learning course at Stanford University. This also meant that I started programming again after a break of almost 30 years. Not only were my programming skills rusty but my mathematics also required a little bit of dusting off. After the first shocks, I rediscovered the joy of learning. It was amazing to begin to understand something that I found important, fascinating and challenging. The rush of endorphins boosted my studies.

From a purely individual point of view, constant learning is a necessary ingredient to personal progress, self-esteem and happiness. It definitely is for me, and I plan to always be studying something for the rest of my life.

From a collective point of view, never before in human history has learning been as necessary as today, when humankind faces existential threats. Only with new discoveries, inventions and innovations can our way of life survive. 

Likewise, the role of higher education has probably never been more important. Investments in research and higher education are key. On a global scale, it’s a life and death question. At the EU level, it’s a question of whether we want to end up as an open-air museum or continue to be one of the main regions of the world economy. At the Finnish level, it’s a choice between dropping permanently out of the Nordic frame of reference or climbing our way back to being a renowned Nordic economy.

In the context of the Finnish economy, our ability to fund the necessary investments for universities is stretched. And maintaining the status quo is not even enough – we need to find a way to increase investments to dig our national economy out of the hole we’ve gotten into. Taking the uncertainties of public funding into account, university fundraising from private sources plays a growing role. It can provide a safety buffer when government funding might be volatile, and it enables long-term planning and supports the launch of research projects at the university.

Many of us have donated É«É«À². I believe we all feel we have done something good and valuable. But it’s not enough; we need to make supporting our home universities a part of Finnish culture. And in that we still have a long way to go. On average, the elite US universities receive about 100 times more donations than Aalto, and donating is 30 times more active than here.
Combined, the difference is 3000-fold. Imagine the impact if we can bridge even 1% of that gap, resulting in 30 times more private funding. That should certainly be doable.

Risto Siilasmaa
Chair of Aalto University Fundraising Advisory Board,
Founder and Chair of WithSecure

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