Helsinki Skyline

The University of Helsinki (Helsingin yliopisto) is the oldest and largest university in Finland. It was founded in 1640 as the "Academy of Turku"; Turku being the former capital of Finland, which was then part of the Swedish realm. After Finland was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1809, the capital was moved to Helsinki. In 1827 the University was transferred to Helsinki, where it opened the following year under the name of the Imperial Alexander University, after the Russian Czar Alexander the First. It was the only university in Finland until 1919. 

By Scandinavian standards, the University of Helsinki is a large university, with over 40,000 members when students, teachers and other staff numbers are combined. About 40 per cent of all doctoral degrees in Finland are completed here. A total of about 33,000 students in the nine faculties make up a quarter of all university students in Finland. The University is bilingual with instruction and services offered in both Finnish and Swedish: about 2,000 of the registered degree students are Swedish-speakers. In some fields of study, such as law and medicine, quotas are reserved for Swedish-speaking students in an effort to guarantee equal linguistic rights for all. The total enrolment of international students at the University of Helsinki is presently over 1,300. 

Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry Viikki Campus

The University of Helsinki is an older, more traditional educational institution and admission is difficult. The pace of studies is usually up to the individual. One outstanding feature of studies at the University of Helsinki is the emphasis on the student's own initiative and individual work. Much of the instruction is still in the lecture form, and the relationship between the student and instructor generally can remain quite official and hierarchical. However, many teachers and entire departments have moved towards more student-to-student and student-to-instructor discussion-orientated lessons and tutoring, and most instructors welcome active student participation.