Possible Restructuring of Faculties at Tartu Postponed
The University of Tartu council has postponed a plan to restructure the institution by creating four major faculties. Perhaps most controversially, the law school was to be incorporated into the Social Sciences faculty effective 2016.
The decision by the senate was tentatively rejected by the council, which sent alternative ideas back to the senate.
The Bar Association had criticized the idea of transformiing nine faclties into four.
"Ending the activity of the law school as an independent academic unit and the restriction of autonomy will undoubtedly have a negative effect on education in the law, development of law and international co-operation in legal theory," the association said in a statement.
The vice rector of Tartu for research and chairman of the committee on the articles of association, Marco Kirm, told uudised.err.ee earlier in the month that law would continue to be taught on the basis of the same curricula even after January 2016 and said a new law-based master's degree program would be opened in response to demand from society.
He said greater integration between subject areas would lead to a more well-rounded education and that the fact that the law school would be an institute would not affect the content of the instruction.
Under the senate-approved plan, economics would be taught in the same faculty as law.
Medicine, philosophy and science would have been the other three major post-2016 faculties.