Page 56 - TLU magazine - The Way to The Top
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TALLINN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE / NO. 14 / SPRING 2020
Astra building of Tallinn University. Photo by: Rainer Aasrand
THELONG-AWAITED
TALLINNUNIVERSITY
Even though Tallinn University has been working under its name for 15 years, ten years prior to that it was clear that the university just had to be born.
There is a document from 1994 in which there are several points on why Tallinn University should be created. The first of them is the fact that “Tallinn has the most significant resources in Estonia in terms of researchers, lecturers, laboratories, software and hardware, equip- ment, buildings, etc., as most of the institutes
of the Academy of Sciences are based in the capital of Estonia and the second and third larg- est university level academic education provid- ing institutions, based on research-oriented academic study and research programmes (including postgraduate education), are located in Tallinn and wish to integrate with TLU”.
This statement of principle was supplemented by a claim that there is no alternative in Estonia for the integration of the Academy of Sciences and the university system.
Only a matter of formalising
Those and many other arguments considered, it was recognised in 1994 that “Tallinn Univer-
sity does not need creating as much as it needs formalising as, essentially, it already exists”.
At the same time, the composition of TU from that time was very different from the one in 2005. Namely, Tallinn University of Technol- ogy, Tallinn Pedagogical University, Institute of Chemical and Biological Physics, Institute of Chemistry, Institute of Experimental Biology, Institute of Economics, Institute of Geology, Institute of Cybernetics, Institute of Energetics, Institute of Ecology, Institute of International and Social Studies and Institute of Experimen- tal and Clinical Medicine declared their readi- ness to merge 26 years ago. It was exactly in the plan that the new university would be run by a president.
However, the idea of major restructuring was also based on Tallinn Pedagogical University itself, which became a university in 1992. A quarter of a century ago the following was recognised:
