Focus on financial sustainability
In 2024, the University renewed its strategy Wisdom and wellbeing for us all. In its meeting in February, the University Board approved the long-term vision and the structure of the strategy’s development programmes: We are a strong research university, a university with societal impact, and an internationally attractive university.
The Board also approved the university’s cross-cutting goals: a sustainable financial basis, a capable and healthy university community, human-centric digitalisation, and a dynamic campus environment.
In August 2024, Kaisa Miettinen joined the University management as vice rector for research and doctoral education and Pasi Raiskinmäki started as vice rector for societal interaction and partnerships.
The year 2024 was a strong one for research and education. The number of peer-reviewed publications continued to grow, and the number of scientific publications is consistently around 3,500 per year.
The year was also successful in competitive research funding. The European Research Council awarded an ERC Advanced Grant, intended for researchers conducting groundbreaking research, to Hannu Häkkinen, a professor of computational nanoscience at the Ģֱ.
The number of degrees increased from the previous year, with 3,321 degrees completed. For the second year in a row, the number of both bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded increased. The number of students graduating in the target time also improved in several disciplines.
In continuous learning, the national position of the JYU Open University improved. The number of completed ECTS credits increased, once again exceeding the threshold of 100,000 ECTS credits.
Cross-unit collaboration in education continued to flourish, with multidisciplinary basic studies in sustainability transition, open for all students, and with cooperation in methodological studies. The University’s first international bachelor’s degree programme was launched in the field of economics.
Collaboration with national and international stakeholders has become more systematic and, to support this approach, the University has continued to develop a digital solution for the management of partnerships. In addition, the University started to build a cooperation platform that combines RDI activities, continuing education and the Open University. JYU further integrated fundraising into the University’s overall financial management. In 2024, JYU received more than one million euros in donations for unrestricted use.
The University intensified cooperation in the Centre of Expertise for Circular Economy and with the wellbeing services county of Central Finland and the collaborative area for healthcare and social welfare. Societal interaction has continued to be active at the Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius, which is part of a new multiparty cooperation agreement established for 2025 to 2029. JYU continued its close cooperation in the European FORTHEM alliance.
The Ģֱ aims to be a carbon negative and nature-positive organisation by 2030. The carbon footprint calculation conducted in 2024 for the University’s operations in 2023 indicated that the carbon footprint of the whole University has shrunk about 40% from the level of 2019. As in previous years, the largest climate impact categories were investments, procurement, real estate and energy.
The Ģֱ promotes sustainability and responsibility through multidisciplinary research and education. For example, the new research area ‘Education, belonging, and sustainable society’ was established at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research. The Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics established the new international bachelor’s programme ‘Business Innovation and Sustainability’, which will launch in autumn 2025 and is closely related to responsibility. The Nanoscience Center has defined sustainable society as one of its research focus areas, covering, for example, sustainable materials and their production, circular economy, and research on catalytic processes on the road to a low-carbon society. The Faculty of Information Technology has highlighted responsibility and ethical viewpoints in the focal areas of society such as artificial intelligence, health, cyber security and digital solutions.
The University’s turnover in the financial period was €245 million, and the result after the operating profits and costs was a loss of €2.6 million. However, the overall result, including investment activity, was a profit of €6.3 million, a significant improvement on the previous financial year.
Government funding for JYU increased by €8 million and supplementary funding grew by €4 million from the previous year. In recent years, the share of supplementary funding in the turnover has remained 35%. Competitive research funding increased to €45 million. The largest project financers continued to be the Research Council of Finland, the Ministry of Education and Culture, and the European Commission together with other EU funding. The share of competitive research funding accounted for around 53% of the supplementary funding.
The 2% increase in operating costs was moderate. The University’s messaging and actions focusing on cost management proved to be effective. The personnel costs increased by €2.6 million, an increase of 2% in comparison to the previous year. Staff costs were 68.4% of all expenses. With facility rents at 13% of total costs, less than a fifth of costs were accounted for by costs other than staff or facility rents.
The total number of person-years worked by employees with a monthly salary declined by 1.6%. Staff with a monthly salary worked for a total of 2,649 person-years (2,691 in 2023). For teaching and research staff, the total was 1,657 person-years (+0.1%) and the number of other staff’s person-years was 902 (–4.5%).
The share of international staff in the person-years of teaching and research staff was 20% (18.5% in 2023). Of the whole staff, the share was 13.1%, which is the same as in 2023. The University’s employees came from 76 countries, with the majority of international staff coming from India, China and Germany.
