Forking career paths - work-life transformation and its implications on education

Aalto university’s new strategy addresses major trends: global sustainability crisis, technological disruptions, and transformation of working life, promising to take greater societal responsibility in degree education and life-long learning. Tight connection with the working life is nothing new in the Department of Architecture. Acceptance into the degree programs—through entry exams or portfolio review—opens the door to the local professional community. Employment is steady and the students are typically recruited already during their bachelor studies, resulting in lengthy study times. Under fiscal constraints there is pressure to shorten them. The one and only landscape architecture program in Finland has educated most of the local professionals over fifty years’ time. Working life as well as the academia itself are in constant transformation, and new streams of scholars with varying agenda are attracted by our education, posing new challenges to the program.