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Column in Postimees: the problem of university education is over-specializing or in other words: the CEO of Estonian Development Fund, Ott Pärna, hopes that the university where his daughter who started school today, hopes to study one day, will be much more open to the world, more international and multifaceted.

It doesn't matter if you answered correctly or not. The idea of the question lies deeper. The question rises from the fact-based basic and high school education (a lot of facts are taught but not how to link them together) and from the growing over-specialization of the university education. Specialists of very narrow fields are produced all over the world and there are too few people who see the big picture and are competent in solving modern day multifaceted problems. The modern name for these people is generalists.

It might come a surprise that in 2004 the ten most needed positions of 2020 did not yet exist. We prepare today's students for jobs which don't exist yet and for solving problems which today are not considered problems by use technologies which are not yet used.

With the lead of the Estonian Development Fund we are putting together a new growth vision for Estonia - an answer to the question about what the competitive Estonian economy should look like in ten years and what we have to do to achieve it. Every research, monitoring or analysis on this topic takes us back to education. Today our economy is in a state where we lack well-defined sectors or fields which would lead us to (new) growth. One can agree with the claim made by Villy Zirnask that in Estonia today, in most sectors there are some minor imaginary strong qualities and a load of real weaknesses (EPL 18.08).

Nevertheless, here and there one can see the passion for creating new success stories and these initiatives must be supported. These initiatives have two things in common. All of them presume multiplication or even ten times increase of their current value in order to achieve macro economical effect in Estonia. This leads us to Estonian education, which has to support these big changes - if we really want them - at least partially. In order to achieve something big, at least some part of the people with world class competence must be brought in from outside of Estonia, though. For example, when developing it's pharmacy industry, Singapore brought eight of the ten key specialists from other countries, mainly from North-America and Europe.

One of these challenges is named "Estonian IT Academy" and it is a cooperation project between the four rectors of universities providing IT-education and the leaders of Information Technology and Telecommunication Association. As a matter of fact, what is done at the industrial and graphic design department of Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) goes well with our goals. EKA, join us!

The goal of this undertaking is to take the Estonian higher IT-education to a significant international level in current situation where we lack about a thousand IT experts; and because of the low birth rate of the 90s, in the near future,there will be about 50 per cent less students in the universities. To succeed, we need 500-1000 foreign students instead of the 50 we have today.

IT, by nature, has multifaceted connections and with increasing its efficiency, it can offer product and service development possibilities for many fields. Mark C. Taylor, professor of Columbia University, goes even further in his reformative article in the New York Times, and suggests that universities eliminate faculties altogether and move to programs which are based on problem-solving and which appear, evolve and disappear organically. We can use the topic of water as an example. The availability, quality, transport etc. of water will pose big scientific and ecological problems in the future. These problems are connected with political and economical challenges which lead also to philosophical, religious and ethical problems. These and other similar problems cannot be solved by using one science vertically. Instead, many it must be done horizontally using different disciplines. The field of cyber-security, which is familiar to us, is multifaceted in a similar way.

The main reason why one Aalto University was created from Helsinki Technical University, Economics and Business University and Art and Design Academy, lies in the fact that the Finns are oriented on problem-solving and innovativeness. The soon-to-be opened and world's sixth most wealthy King Abdullah University of Science and Technology has the same ambitions. There are no academic faculties in that university. Studying and research work will be done in four research institutes which concentrate on biosciences, material sciences, energy and environment and computer sciences and mathematics, respectively.

Today my oldest daughter begins her studies in a school which has a relatively high level. I do hope, though, that she'll graduate from a school different from the one where she begins her studies at, and the university she'll try to enrol one day, will be more open to the world, more international and multifaceted.

To make a change such as this, twelve years is actually an optimal time period. One can see that the innovative countries are moving in this direction. We have no excuses for being less ambitious! The success of Estonia lies in the versatility and the level of education of the future decision-makers.