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Language Centre Targeted for Sackings |
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By News
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Friday, 19 February 2010 |
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Oulu University’s Language Centre will be heavily targeted for sackings and staff have begun an online petition to ‘support it’.
The Language Centre, which offers courses in various languages both to students and other language enthusiasts, is being targeted as part of Oulu University’s swingeing cuts, reported by 65DN today.
Language Centre head, Heather Kanasmaa, is vociferous about saving the centre: ‘We in the Language Centre believe that we represent a very concrete and central contribution to Oulu's and the university's internationalisation process,’ she said. ‘At the moment we offer language, culture and communication skills courses in a wide range of languages. We are trying to prevent cuts in the range of what we will be able to offer in the future!’
According to the English teacher, the petition – now online in English http://www.adressit.com/supportlang - has already received 2600 signatures.
Kaisu Jarde, a German teacher, explained to 65DN that the centre was being targeted because a large number of staff had previously managed to negotiate a high level of pay, having previously been classified as ‘assistants’ and thus on a lower salary. The university is unable to fund these salaries.
Jarde felt that the centre should be supported because ‘there is an EU policy that people should be able to speak at least two foreign languages and in northern Finland there often isn’t the numbers to run language courses in some foreign languages’ other than at the Language Centre.
The language centre offers courses in Finnish for foreigners as well as various languages including English, Italian, German and Japanese.
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