All that is best at the University of Helsinki involves the meeting of people, meandering, unhurried discussions between people from different fields, coffee rooms, parties. That's why I find it horrifying that during my time at the University, it has been turned into a results factory.

It's only 23 years since I first walked through the door of the Main Building. During freshers’ week we were told that at the Faculty of Arts you should study widely and deliberately and attend all kinds of lectures, even those that had no bearing on your own field. Back then the very thought of HOPS (Personal Study Plan), the multiple reporting of publications, and continuous evaluation would have been inconceivable.

I am still a rebel. I always say in my classes that graduating isn't exactly a bad thing, but if my audience are at the University primarily to get a degree they are in the wrong place. The university is a community of scholars centred on wisdom and education; degrees and learned publications are merely a by-product of the university. You don't have to go to university to find an occupation, and the academia isn't so much a profession as a way of life.

In any case, the University of Helsinki is my homeland. You don't choose your homeland, and it doesn't necessarily treat you well, but you can't stop loving it. I love the buildings in the City Centre Campus of the University of Helsinki, I love its professors and students. I love the smell of old books, I love the thought of reading a book on the same spot where M. A. Castrén had read it before me. I love the young people who want to know everything and demand the impossible of themselves, but I also love those who abandon their studies because their life is full enough already.

Whenever I visit other universities I silently compare them to the University of Helsinki, and rarely does the University of Helsinki come out second best. Today I am especially in love with the Main Library and its café. Within these walls I'd be content to spend the rest of my life, but I doubt the present Government will stand for it. I don't have permanent tenure. I do not think I need tenure, but some sort of continuity would be nice. I am concerned whether academic expertise will count for anything much longer in this world of homogenisation and pandering to the lowest common denominator.