Improving IT education in Estonian universities

After getting independence in 1992, Estonia started to develop its university system from the Soviet model towards the West European model. The restructuring of higher education is not easy; there is a lack of highly educated people. The reasons for that are manifold: after opening the borders, some highly skilled specialists moved abroad; industry and fast growing economy is competing with universities providing higher salaries to specialists; and in general, university work is not ranked on a high level in social status. The fast growing economy demands new kinds of skills traditionally not included in university education. Especially in the area of information technology, the problem is significant; the IT industry is growing fast and demands a growing amount of skilled people. To satisfy this demand, universities have implemented a development programme in co-operation with a network of some European universities. The development programme has four goals: (1) improvements in technical infrastructure; (2) dramatic growth in the amount of postgraduate students to satisfy the demand for university teachers; (3) improving the IT curricula to satisfy the changing needs of the industry and economy; and (4) development of university/industry co-operation. This paper describes these development activities, concentrating especially on the co-operation network of universities and the knowledge transfer from other countries, especially from Finland, to Estonia.