Viewed from a UK perspective, the Baltic states’ student corporations feel really quite alien.
In Latvia, Dzintra is a closed, academic, national organisation that unites students in lifelong friendship to maintain Latvian traditions and uphold values of trust, truth, friendship, honour and love of the fatherland.
And as it’s a sorority, only women can get involved.
Its balls and carnivals look very formal, its uniform and dress code and rules of decorum look excessively strict, and its focus on femininity and nationalism really aren’t the sorts of things we see students organise around in the UK.
Meanwhile in Estonia, Korporatsioon Revelia is a student fraternity we spent an evening with in Tartu, this time exclusively recruiting male students.
Its goal is to raise among its members honest, conscientious and nationally-minded young Estonian academics who will apply their knowledge and skills for the spiritual and material well-being of the Estonian people – and along with the uniforms, caps and symbols, it demands from its members cohesion, a sense of duty, dignified behaviour and a serious attitude towards studies.
The nationalism and pride in the country makes more sense when you remember how new these nations are, and how keen they are to assert their independence and identity as the threat from Russian occupation still looms.
And the activities make more sense once you’re doing them. Maybe it was the Latvian lager, but once the songbooks had been passed out and all we’d had a run at singing one of them, the feeling of belonging and association with students whose politics we might usually be suspicious of was visceral.
And while there are controversies about the role that these organisations play in the production and reproduction of social elites, there’s something special about the obvious aspiration that these student leaders hold both for their student members and the future of their society that is worth considering.
Protecting student influence
We met both Dzintra and Revelia on Day 1 of the Wonkhe SUs study tour to the Baltics and Finland, where 40 or so student leaders and SU staff are on a five day tour of over 30 students’ unions, guilds, fraternities, and infrastructure organisations.
We started the morning in Riga where Latvijas Studentu Apvienība (Latvia’s NUS) has been busy influencing the country’s higher education funding reforms. As it stands, public universities get an allocation of state-subsidised study places, but the sense is that that resulted in universities lowering admission requirements to fill those places – which in turn contributed to student dropout.
Now the Ministry of Education and Science is piloting an alternative approach – where universities will be free to recruit as many students as they like as long as they hit key targets on particular subjects (ie STEM) and metrics like drop-out.
And it’s busy developing a state higher education standard, which will both set basic, mandatory principles for the content and structure of study programmes, and the way in which those programmes help students develop the skills they need for life and work.
As they would in the UK, universities are pushing back – but LSA’s pragmatic approach to policy recognises that mass HE will only get the funding it needs if it commands public support and meets student demand.
If anything the bigger controversy is the intent to switch from the senate (with its multiple student reps and student veto) of a university approving the budget, to a system where the rector (VC) and council hold all the cards. It would be foolish to bet against its talented President Liene Levada winning the argument when she’s in the ministerial meetings.
Going global
We saw yesterday how her work at a national level has been influencing the way in which international students are recruited, but we’ve also seen some fascinating projects on a more local level too.
At Riga Technical University SU, the International Student Council is quasi-autonomous body that meets every two weeks to coordinate events and activities, and discuss and resolve issues specific interest to international students. Meanwhile at the University of Latvia’s SU, the International Students’ Collegium is another autonomous body with the SU, focusing on academic issues faced by international students, organising events, and driving up integration, diversity, opportunity, and community.
There are trade-offs here between an approach that seeks to “mainstream” international students into the structures of an SU and one that recognises that many of the issues are distinct – either way they’re getting the sort of attention that might be missing in the UK if its officers are all home students.
One thing we’ve talked a lot about on the trip so far is the often bewildering number of “associations” that we’re seeing – what we might recognise as hobby-based “clubs and societies” are probably more sparse, but any number of associations seem to exist where an SU or university might run a department or function instead. It’s partly about mutual (as opposed to charitable) traditions being stronger outside of the UK – but either way it means we often find endless numbers of unpaid student leaders despite budgets often looking thinner.
Hence at Riga Technical and Riga Stradiņš University, the Science Festival is joint student association that features panel discussions, seminars, and laboratory tours whose primary aim is to acquaint students with the field of science and current significant issues. Meanwhile Science Rocks is another association, but one that organises discussion events to both promote science and explain key debates on everything from cryptocurrencies, to electric cars. Along with the pretty much universal versions of faculty, school or department councils or chapters, it means that there’s much more positive student-led academic activity than we often see in the UK.
As ever, we’ve been especially interested in how new students are inducted and welcomed into student life. In Estonia old traditions of “fox dubbing” (where “foxes” are new students) often involved dangerous and abusive initiation activity – today they’re more likely to be a day of games, quizzes, treasure hunts and speed networking activities organised by the faculty’s student council – although we hear there’s still a bit of mayonnaise eating to be done.
Back in Latvia, Starting RTU is an event for first-year students offering insights into the study process, scientific, practical, and extracurricular activities. The event features discussions led by senior students on study support and extracurricular activities, providing tips and answering queries about university life.
There’s a similar event over at the University of Latvia’s SU, where Aristotelis starts with belonging-focussed events and games organised by the faculty student associations, and culminates in a day-long festival in the city featuring a parade, speakers from the university and SU and all of Latvia’s top popstars.
And naturally, it’s all organised by a student association – because students have such a great experience the first time around, they then clamour to be the ones that organise it next time.
That project and event focus for student activities helps the innovation. The University of Latvia SU’s project competition aims to encourage students to engage in academic activities, innovation, research, cultural, sports, and social projects, all while addressing current issues and enhancing the study process – and any student or student organisation can submit projects monthly.
A two-round evaluation process includes a written application and an oral presentation, and students are supported to both recognise the skills they’ve developed and turn what amount to a series of student innovation pilots into permanent parts of the student experience.
Cooperating across Europe
One thing that has been notable is the way in which both the local and national unions in the Baltics talk about the EU. That’s partly about how important alliance and cooperation are to young, small nations – but it’s also about some of the project work that the EU funds that we are shut out of those days in the UK.
Hence a year or so ago Eesti Üliõpilaskondade Liit (Estonia’s NUS) ran a project on Student Democracy in the Global Era, addressing some of the challenges faced by international students in Estonia and aiming to improve their representation and integration through training, seminars, workshops, and media opportunities – funded by the EU.
Meanwhile EÜL’s Smart Student project, this time funded through Norway’s Active Citizens Fund, aims to improve students’ understanding of their rights and involvement in higher education.
Aiming to both drive up the number of knowledgeable student representatives and overall student awareness, the project included focus groups and surveys, creating a widely heard podcast, and setting up a website that students now visit in their droves to understand how to be a partner, rather than a just a consumer, of their education.
More from Estonia tomorrow and then on to Finland, via a ferry that literally breaks the ice on the way. They like breaking ice here.
