LET'S TALK ABOUT: Business & Innovation
Monday, September 11, 2017
Two weeks ago, I spoke with Caroline Rute, the Technology Transfer Manager of MEKTORY, and asked her, amongst others, about the programmes Tallinn University of Technology (TTÜ) offers, about the university's future, and why she decided to come back to Estonia, after having lived abroad for seven years. To get an idea of what MEKTORY looks like, please click here.
INTERVIEW
Hi Caroline, thank you for meeting up. First of all, can you maybe talk a bit about TTÜ and its status in Estonia?
The two largest public universities in Estonia are TTÜ and University of Tartu. The difference is that TTÜ is focused more on technology, while University of Tartu is focused on more classical subjects such as history, law, economics, political science, etc. But, of course, both universities have a lot of overlaps. For example, both universities teach information technology (IT).
TTÜ is celebrating its 100th anniversary next year. How are you celebrating?
We have different ideas on how to celebrate properly, our Idea Competition being one of them. Next year, everyone is welcome to submit suggestions on how the university should develop in the future. In a sense, it’s really a way of collecting forward-thinking ideas. Coincidentally, by the way, our anniversary is at the same time as Estonia’s 100th anniversary; which I think is very nice. And our neighbour, Finland, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. So there are many reasons to celebrate.
Has the focus of your university always been on technology or has it developed throughout time?
The university started with special engineering courses in 1918, then became the Tallinn College of Engineering, and achieved the status of a public institution of higher education in 1920. Gradually, it developed into this large university that it is now. Despite having had more than five different names in the decades since its creation, the focus has always been on technology.
The campus seems massive. I have noticed the Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol when I got here. Does it belong to TTÜ?
The Science Park is a separate entity, but is closely linked to TTÜ and its activities. It was founded by TTÜ, the Republic of Estonia, and the City of Tallinn. As you have probably seen, we have quite a few startups in this building. Once these startups are more advanced, a lot of them choose to be incubated in the Science Park. Also, many companies rent an office in the Science Park and then collaborate with us – on research and development projects, for instance. You might have seen Skype here, which is only one example out of many. In total, there are around 150 technology companies located on our campus.
How many students are currently studying here?
Prior to World War II, the number of students at TTÜ remained under 500, while the number today is almost 30 times bigger: approximately 12,000. The university has around 70,000 alumni who all have contributed to Estonia’s development.
Can you describe your position and the tasks it involves?
I work at the Business and Innovation Centre (MEKTORY) as a Technology Transfer Manager. When companies want to collaborate with the university, they often approach me or my colleagues first. We help them with their projects; that includes finding partners and searching for funding.
So MEKTORY, in a way, works as an intermediary?
Most definitely. MEKTORY is particularly important for establishing business contacts and helping ideas to be turned into specific collaboration projects. The university signs approximately four business agreements per week. Of course, not everything comes through this centre, as a lot of interaction also takes place directly between the scientists and their contact network. However, we encourage everyone to start by contacting MEKTORY.
TTÜ is publicly funded. Are there other sources of revenue?
Although we do receive funding from the government, as every other public university does, we are in intense competition for all sorts of other funding, like for European Union funding – for example, from Horizon 2020 – or for business collaboration contracts. And that's my job; to help secure such funding from business collaboration.
Do you have other “branches” in Estonia?
Yes, we have regional colleges. So, in addition to the campus in Tallinn, we have some smaller units as well. If you don't want to live too far from your town or village, you might be able to study something outside of Tallinn. Also, we are planning to develop online courses that would let students study from wherever they live.
Would you say that TTÜ is an international university?
Yes. A third of our programmes are in English, which means that we also have quite a few international students. All in all, we have 2,000 international students.
How many faculties does TTÜ have?
In total, there are four different faculties: Business & Governance, the School of Engineering, the School of IT, and the School of Science. The School of Engineering is by far the biggest one; it provides most of Estonia’s engineers, covering all engineering fields that are vital for a country, such as civil engineering, energy technology, and industrial engineering.
I would like to focus on the School of IT, as it deals with digital progress. Can you tell me how many departments the school has?
There are four departments: one that deals with computer systems; one that deals with software science; one that deals with health technologies; and one that deals with electronics. The department of health technologies is particularly important for the public sector. Many international students and guests are interested in Estonia’s public e-health system. All departments, though theoretically separated, are closely interconnected and often work together.
The university has gone through drastic changes in 2017. What do you hope to achieve after the reforms have been fully implemented?
All faculties have gone through vast changes recently. The plan of our rector is that our university will become what he calls “TalTech Digital.” You are right, we introduced a completely new institutional structure at the beginning of this year. A lot of scientists thus received different job titles or moved to other departments. Many new programmes were introduced and existing ones updated; which makes sense, because renewal is important for a technology university. Moreover, we are currently recruiting a Chief Digital Officer. So the university will have a CDO, so to speak, who will be accompanied by a digital advisory board. This is similar to what the Estonian government did; they selected a Chief Information Officer to be a figurehead for Estonia’s digitalisation. The university’s CDO will have to analyse the current situation and then create a plan on how to digitalise and innovate the university even further.
Where in particular do you think the CDO will want to improve?
The digitalisation of teaching. Right now, we are encouraging and helping lecturers to complement their lessons with more digital material and feedback systems. By 2020, having an e-support system for taught courses is mandatory for every lecturer.
I saw that you already offer courses that are completely online.
True, but if you compare them to US universities, we are lagging behind. However, we are working on this, so hopefully we will soon have some success stories.
How would it work then, ideally?
Organising massive open online courses (MOOCs) would allow an increasing number of students to learn from Estonia’s experiences, in topics such as cyber security and e-governance. Plus, we want to offer our own students the opportunity to access more material online. This should, ideally, happen within the next three years. What exactly it will look like largely depends on the ideas of the CDO. We aim to meet some milestones next year and then, by 2020, the TalTech Digital should be ready.
Was there a political push for this?
It is certainly in line with Estonia’s overall policy and the government supports any attempt to further digitalise the education sector. Because, in the end, everyone benefits from it. For instance, reducing the amount of paper-based work is not only resource-efficient, but also time-saving. Digital signatures in particular are important to make this work. Though there are still procedures within the university that require some printing, there are also many procedures that can only be done digitally. If I, as an employee, want to go abroad on a work trip, then I can only apply for it digitally. Such small changes reduce the amount of work, which means I no longer have to go somewhere to give someone a piece of paper; everything is dealt with digitally.
As Estonia is digitalising procedures in a very short amount of time, I can imagine that there is a shortage of IT specialists; especially if you consider that the pool of recruitment, due to the small population size, is limited.
That is indeed a problem and it is also reflected in our number of IT graduates, which is a lot less than the number of students joining us. Because the IT sector in Estonia is growing so rapidly, there is a constant need for IT specialists. So a lot of students actually don't finish their studies, because they start working from an early age on. This is, from the perspective of the universities, of course not good news. For Estonia in general, in contrast, the existence of a booming IT sector is a positive development. The state gets a lot of tax revenue from this, and the jobs in IT are very advanced; they require a lot of critical thinking and skills, which, in turn, is rewarded with high wages. As I said, we are trying to make our study programmes more focused, more flexible, more digital; so that students don't have to quit their studies if they wish to pursue some job opportunities before graduating. In order to achieve that, it is crucial to involve businesses in the study process. The School of IT is collaborating with more than 100 companies to make the study programmes very practical and allow the companies to find future employees among the students, while encouraging them to graduate as well as to join their teams.
How are they trying to accomplish that?
The companies announce student projects, they offer internship programmes, or they provide scholarship opportunities. Most importantly, though, IT companies are keen to shape the curriculums of some programmes. For example, about six companies work on an elective course about app testing, because they are interested in finding students who want to continue to work in this field. So they are creating the curriculum completely themselves. This close relationship between the School of IT and business ultimately establishes a win-win situation: We, on the one hand, benefit, because we get a glimpse of what is happening on the market; and the companies, on the other hand, benefit, because the process of recruiting students is facilitated. Overall, the IT sector is more active than other sectors when it comes to recruiting employees at an early stage.
I noticed that most of the undergraduate programmes you offer are in Estonian. How come?
On the bachelor’s level, we focus on educating Estonian students. The goal is to teach them the broad basis that is needed to work in the Estonian IT sector later on.
And then there’s one undergraduate programme in English, the BSc in Cyber Security Engineering.
...which is the one I find the most interesting. You might have heard that Estonia was one of the first countries in the world that was under a cyber attack. That happened in 2007. In the last ten years, we have tried to raise awareness of issues of cyber security. Because we have a relatively long experience with cyber security, the programme we offer at the moment is very sophisticated.
Is there any masters programme you find particularly appealing?
It depends on your interests. Many of our postgraduate programmes are in English and very interesting. Personally, I find the MSc in e-Governance, Technologies & Services attractive, because it teaches how e-services in the public sector are created; but everything you learn in this programme can similarly be applied to the private sector, which makes it so special.
Cyber security seems to be relevant for every IT student. Do you offer workshops on this topic?
Well, we organise Cyber Olympics, a fairly ambitious project. This year, contestants had to defend Atlantis, an imaginary city. The main task was to take care of the transport systems. Thus, summing up, we not only raise awareness of cyber security issues, but we also teach the tools needed to tackle them.
You said that you are closely working together with tech companies. Can you list a few examples of on-going projects?
We have recently started a collaboration project with CybExer Technologies regarding cyber hygiene. In the space of three years, with funding of around €300,000, the overarching goal is to advance their e-learning platform on cyber hygiene. This platform helps people figure out what cyber security problems they might have, and then reduces the risks. Another example of a company collaboration project would be our cooperation with Guardtime. We are trying to improve their digital signature system, helping it become more efficient as well as more secure. Then there is the “Single Window” project, which is trying to improve the logistics sector. Logistics companies are interested in a single data entry point. At the moment, every company has their own data base. In the project, we are looking at the opportunity to create one single platform so that all data would have to be inserted only once. This would make the whole process a lot easier. This approach, by the way, has also been adopted by the Estonian government. If I, as a citizen, moved to a different city, I would not need to notify different public institutions individually; instead, I would only need to insert my data once. In Belgium, where I lived for a while, the system is different and much less convenient. Even years after I had moved away, there were still government institutions trying to get hold of me, because they thought I still lived in Belgium. This problem does not exist in Estonia. The system that is used here is called XRoad, a combined system that all public organisations can use to exchange information securely. Every single public institution has my information. It is convenient, safe, and reduces the number of mistakes made.
Is there not a risk of older people being left behind? What about people who do not have access to a computer?
We are moving very slowly to the next system. Compared to other countries, of course, we are moving fast, but you must keep in mind that we started digitalising public procedures already in the early 1990s. We have had nationwide campaigns; my grandparents, for example, took part in computer lessons. This does not ensure that everyone becomes a proficient user, but there have been 25 years of efforts to familiarise people with computers, and I think almost every Estonian knows the basics. And as time goes on, the next generation will have even better computer skills. Also, everyone has an ID with a chip. So you simply need to insert your ID card into your computer, type in your PIN code, and that’s it. Even if someone is really struggling, there is a helpline that can be called. Moreover, there are computer centres in many locations around Estonia for those who do not own a personal computer.
Are there politicians who play on the fears of people who are worried about “technology determining our lives”?
Yes, there are indeed politicians who exploit such fears, especially on the regional level. But, in general, digitalisation has made life so much easier that everyone who actually tries the online services will soon overcome their doubts. There is no way you want to be in a queue for an hour when you can do everything online within a few minutes.
You did both your undergraduate and your postgraduate studies abroad. Why did you decide to come back to Estonia?
Personally, I think it’s very important to have roots in some place. It doesn't necessarily have to be the place you were born in, but it is easier to go back to the place you know so well. Although I lived abroad for seven years, I knew that Estonia was a place where I would easily fit in. Plus, compared to, say, Germany, Estonia is a country which makes it relatively easy for young people to get their career started. The workplace hierarchies are relatively flat, and because of the small size of the country’s population, it is relatively easy to establish a good network. Also, your academic background is often not as important here as it would be in Germany, because practical experiences are very highly valued; even when they are not accompanied by certificates and diplomas. And finally, the unemployment rate is relatively low. Even though I didn’t think of that at the time of moving back here, it is relatively easy to find a job in Estonia.
What exactly do you mean by flat hierarchies?
It is very likely that you will be in a team together with your boss; which, I believe, will generally lead to better results. Someone who has only worked in a company for a few months is granted the same rights as someone who has worked there for, say, 15 years. There exist different reasons for this dynamic, but I think the most important one is that Estonia is so small that you want to make sure that you use the skills of the employees to the maximum extent.
You mentioned that it was easy to find a job in Estonia. Is that also true for people who don’t speak Estonian?
If you don't speak Estonian, it will be more difficult, because there aren't many jobs that do not have Estonian as a requirement. I must add, however, that this depends on the sector. If you work as a doctor, Estonian is almost compulsory. If you want to work in IT, in contrast, Estonian is much less important. Still, many internationals studying here leave after they are finished; some want to be back home, others just want to be in a bigger country with even bigger companies.
Finally, I would like to test how “digital” you are. Do you declare your taxes online? Do you use online voting?
Yes and yes. I do anything I can online. And when I am not able to do something online, I get frustrated and immediately notice the great benefits of digitalisation.
What do you think the near future will hold for Estonia?
Everything will be online. The idea is to have the government as a user-friendly provider that is offering you services, instead of you having to demand and search for them. An example: if you get a child, you will not have to submit a request for child support, because the government, carrying out its duty as a proactive entity, knows about the birth and will make sure that you as a parent receive funding. This is good, because citizens often do not know what they can apply for. Although not everything works as planned yet, we are moving in the direction of a truly digital country.
Caroline, thank you very much for the interview and all the best for the future!
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